Just months after winning his 1941 Academy Award for best actor in The Philadelphia Story, Jimmy Stewart, one of the best-known actors of the day, left Hollywood and joined the US Army. He was the first big-name movie star to enlist in World War II.

An accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early 1942. With his celebrity status and huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to starring in recruiting films, attending rallies, and training younger pilots.

Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe, not spend time in a stateside training command. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted.

Stewart, now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the US Army Air Corps’ top brass had tried to keep the popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would hear nothing of it.

Determined to lead by example, he bucked the system, assigning himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit.

But his wartime service came at a high personal price.

In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being “flak happy,” today called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

When he returned to the United States in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming. In one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130 men, most of whom he knew personally.

He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over.

As one of Stewart’s biographers put it, “Every decision he made (during the war) was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.”

In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in It’s a Wonderful Life. 

The rest is history.

Actors and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting. His PTSD was being captured on film for potentially millions to see.

But despite Stewart’s inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most accomplished and beloved actors in American history.

When asked in 1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany, he said, “This country’s conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we’ll have to fight.”

While Stewart was fighting in Europe, his Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father’s Pennsylvania hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said his father, a World War I veteran, was the person who had made the biggest impact on him.

In 1949, Stewart married Gloria Hatrick McLean, adopted her two young sons from her first marriage, Ronald and Michael, and two years later celebrated the birth of his twin daughters, Judy and Kelly.

After serving his country for more than 20 years, Brigadier General Stewart finished his US Air Force career at the mandatory retirement age of 60.

In June 1969, Stewart’s adopted son, Ronald, a 24-year-old lieutenant in the Marines, was serving with Company A, 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, in Quang Tri, Vietnam, when his six-man recon patrol came under heavy attack. During the ensuing firefight, Lt. McLean killed eight communist soldiers, sacrificed his life to save a wounded Marine, and was posthumously awarded the Silver Star.

“I don’t think there’s a day goes by that I don’t think of Ron,” Jimmy Stewart told a UPI reporter in 1982. “He wanted to be a Marine. And I, and I encouraged it. I thought it was wonderful. He wanted to serve his country … I don’t think it’s a tragedy. It’s a loss … it’s a terrible, terrible loss, but tragic, no. He died for his country.”

Jimmy Stewart was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and died in 1997 at the age of 89.

INFLUNSR. defines integrity as choosing to be responsible to what is true. This holiday season, many of us will watch the classic Christmas film, It’s A Wonderful Life, and revel in the classic tale of honest George Bailey. It’s a Wonderful Life teaches that everyone can make a difference by living a responsible, integrity-filled, caring life. It presents the counterargument to the contention that, to be influential, the next generation should follow their own star, leave the community in which they grew up, and go out into the world. In the view of this film, a wonderful life depends upon family, friends and having an honest job that contributes to the community. Finding the right balance between self-fulfillment and dedication to others is really the work of all of us. 

The letter of 1 Thessalonians is written by Paul to a church in northern Greece.  1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 says “… make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.” In these days of rampant corporate and business greed, Bailey, as head of the town’s Savings and Loan Association, keeps his own salary at a reasonable level. He makes sure that the Savings and Loan is operated for the benefit of its members and serves the interests of the community. He has a lifelong competition with the town’s richest businessman who, despite his vast wealth, will do anything to make another dollar. How does this instruction in 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 and the example of George Bailey contrast what culture considers influence?

Journal your thoughts. We will discuss this later in the month in the Circle…

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