The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

GWEN IFILL: I'm Gwen Ifill. Jim Lehrer has the holiday off. On the NewsHour this Fourth of July, the GI Bill and American prosperity with NewsHour regulars Haynes Johnson, Michael Beschloss and Doris Kearns Goodwin, plus historian Stephen Ambrose; Ray Suarez explores the lasting appeal of the all- American artist, Norman Rockwell; Margaret Warner talks fly-fishing with author Richard Louv; essayist Roger Rosenblatt considers the pursuit of happiness; and we remember dancer Harold Nicholas, who died yesterday. It all follows our summary of the news this holiday Tuesday.

NEWS SUMMARY

GWEN IFILL: On this Independence Day, there were celebrations from coast to coast; among them, a parade of tall ships, "Opsail 2000" in New York Harbor. The vessels sailed from around the world. They were joined by U.S. Navy warships, as well as Coast Guard cutters. President Clinton viewed the scene from the aircraft carrier "John F. Kennedy." He took note of the harbor's historic and strategic role during the American revolution.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: As the armies eyed each other across the channel, the Declaration of Independence arrived from Philadelphia. George Washington ordered it to be read allowed to the troops. It was at the tip of Manhattan Island, just to our north, where the troops first heard they were actually citizens of a new nation. -- where they first heard the words, "we hold these truths to be self-evident." And where they first pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honor.

GWEN IFILL: First Lady Hillary Clinton and daughter Chelsea also joined the President for the day's ceremonies. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, announced late Monday it will soon raise oil production. The country's petroleum minister said it was ready to increase output by 500,000 barrels a day. But other members of OPEC, the petroleum-producing cartel, said they have not been consulted on such a move. The cost of crude has been above $30 a barrel, keeping gasoline prices high. The stage is set for an historic tennis match-up at the Wimbledon tournament. The Williams sisters-- Venus and Serena-- each won quarterfinal victories today, and will now play each other in the semifinals on Thursday. That will be the first time sisters have ever faced off in the final rounds of a grand slam tournament. Tap dancer Harold Nicholas died Monday of heart failure at age 79. He and his older brother, Fayard, started out in Vaudeville as children. They went on to dance on Broadway, on television and in more than 50 movies. We'll have a sample of their work at the end of the program tonight. Between now and then, 50 years of the GI Bill, artist Norman Rockwell, a conversation about fly-fishing and a Roger Rosenblatt essay.

FOCUS - GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY

GWEN IFILL: On this Independence Day, Spencer Michels begins our look at the GI Bill and the impact it's had on the country.

SPENCER MICHELS: At Harvard and many other colleges around the country it's reunion time again. The returning alumni include the class of 1950. In that year, the graduates included some of the first beneficiaries of the GI Bill, the benefits program for veterans of World War II, veterans like John Moser and Ed Pidelford. The two former classmates at Georgetown University celebrated their golden anniversary last month. During the war Padelford served in infantry camp in Camp Landings, Florida.

ED PADELFORD, WWII Veteran: Every day the people who were training us would say, "You're going to be in on the invasion of Japan," because we were in something called an "infantry replacement training depot."

SPENCER MICHELS: The invasion never happened, of course, because Japan surrendered after the atomic bombs were dropped. Mosher served as a paratrooper in France.

JOHN MOSER, WWI Veteran: I ended up in the 101st Airborne Division and we were located - my company was located in a small French town called Mormala Petite. This was, I would think, about eighty to a hundred clicks away from Paris.

SPENCER MICHELS: Before World War II, U.S. veterans who were not disabled received few, if any, benefits upon their return home. That did not sit well with many World War I GIs during the Great Depression. In 1932, at least 15,000 marched on Washington, demanding early payments of a bonus promised under federal law.

MAN: I came to Washington to get my bonus, and I'm going to wait till I get it if I have to wait till 1945.

SPENCER MICHELS: The bonus marchers were driven out of town by the U.S. Army and never received their early payments that year. But a decade later, during World War II, the American Legion joined forces with newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and crafted the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, also known as the GI Bill of Rights. President Roosevelt - planning for the eventual return of 12 million soldiers to the economy and mindful of the angry bonus marchers from 30s - was favorably inclined.

PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT: We are laying plans for the return to civilian life of our gallant men and women in the armed services. They must not be demobilized into an environment of inflation and unemployment to a place on the bread line or on a corner selling apples.

SPENCER MICHELS: FDR initially favored a more limited bill, but in June of 1944, a week after D-Day, he signed the GI Bill into law. Among the key benefits was education. Any veteran who served 90 days, regardless of color or financial situation, qualified for up to $500 per term for vocational school or for college. Ed Pidelford said that's what made University affordable for him and most of his peers.

ED PADELFORD: I probably could not have attended college unless I really had saved a great deal of money, because my parents were just ordinary. We weren't poor, but they didn't have any - enough money that they could have afforded to send me to college.

JOHN MOSER: The wonderful thing about the GI Bill was, of course, the fact I did not have to work. My wife did work, but I did not have to. The college - the government paid for all expenses; they paid for tuition; they paid for books, and they gave us a munificent sum of $90 a month that we could squander away on food and housing.

SPENCER MICHELS: The GIs flooded the campuses. In the words of the "New York Times" they were "hogging the honor rolls." The veterans doubled college registration in the 1940s, forcing schools to build temporary housing facilities. In addition to education, the law provided low-interest home mortgages backed by the federal government. That sparked a demand for new homes in the post war years - a key ingredient to the exploding growth of suburbia.

JOHN MOSER: After I got hold of the GI Bill and we bought a house in Rockville, Maryland, at the fantastic rate of 4 1/4 percent interest, which I thought was very, very high in those days. In fact, when we finally sold that house, I lost my GI Bill. I went to 5 1/2 percent, and I was very, very upset about that.

SPENCER MICHELS: The GI Bill also provided business loans to veterans, established veterans' hospitals, and provided unemployment benefits that included a $20-a-week allowance for up to a year, the so-called 52/20 Club. Statistically, the law far exceeded anyone's expectations. It provided education vouchers to 8 million veterans. It doubled the ratio of homeowners from one in three before the war to two in three afterwards. And according to a 1986 government study, each dollar invested in the bill yielded 5 to 12 dollars in tax revenues. Over the years, the GI Bill has been called many things by historians and veterans alike - a Marshall Plan for America, a Magic Carpet to the Middle Class.

ED PADELFORD: Well, I think the term the "magic carpet" probably is correct. I mean, as I said, it enabled me to go to college, which I doubt whether -- without it I couldn't have done that, and it enabled me to make a career in the State Department and the Foreign Service, not to mention the Air Force Reserve. It eventually got me up to Air Force Colonel. And so it was - it was essential - the GI Bill. Without it, none of these things could have occurred.

JOHN MOSER: I feel very strongly about owing your government sometimes - military service - in service to the country. And, I mean, I had never expected to get anything out of it. So whatever I got, be it GI Bill, be it the home loan, whatever, it was all a fantastic bonus that I had not counted on, that I had not expected. And it made my life very, very much easier.

SPENCER MICHELS: The original GI Bill expired in 1956. Scaled back versions were offered to veterans of the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and today, a law known as the Montgomery GI Bill provides education and job training benefits as an incentive for military recruits.

GWEN IFILL: Jim Lehrer recorded this discussion about the GI Bill just before the holiday.

JIM LEHRER: Now, some further perspective on the GI Bill from NewsHour regulars Presidential Historians Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss, journalist/author Haynes Johnson; joining them tonight Historian Stephen Ambrose, who's written extensively on World War II. His last book was "Citizen Soldiers, the U.S. Army from the Normandy Beaches to the Bulge to the Surrender of Germany."

Stephen Ambrose, how important was the GI Bill to this country right after the war?

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Listen, that GI Bill was the best piece of legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress, and it made modern America. The educational establishment boomed and then boomed and them boomed. The suburbs, starting with Levittown and others, were paid by GIs borrowing on their GI Bill at a very low interest rate. Thousands and thousands of small businesses were started in this country and are still there thanks to the loans from the GI Bill. It transformed our country.

JIM LEHRER: Transformed our country, Doris?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, no question. I agree with everything Steve said, including the passion with which he said it. I think few laws have had so much effect on so many people. It meant that blue collar workers, a whole generation of blue collar workers were enabled to go to college, become doctors, lawyers, and engineers, and that their children would grow up in a middle class family. It meant, as Stephen said, that people had homes, instead of being renters in the city, so that they could bring up their children in a home that they had owned. I mean, think about it. In 1940, the average GI was 26 years old and had an average of one year of high school as his only education, and now, suddenly, the college doors were open. I mean, it's so amazing to realize that the university presidents thought it was a terrible idea at first. The president of Harvard said it would create unqualified people, the most unqualified of this generation coming into college. The president of the University of Chicago feared we'd be creating educational hobos, but as the piece earlier showed, these were mature, responsible people, the best of their generation in college. It shows what happens when you give people who don't have a chance an extraordinary opportunity.

JIM LEHRER: Extraordinary, amazing, Haynes, those words do jump to mind, don't you think?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yeah. And what they said is right; it did transform the country. It made a difference. Steve Ambrose got his graduate degree in Wisconsin. I was on the GI Bill after Korea, and I got a scaled down version, but that's how I got my graduate degree.

JIM LEHRER: I bought my first house on the GI Bill.

HAYNES JOHNSON: Yeah. There you are. I mean, the idea of this - it is so incredible to look back on that - the idea that in 1940 - in the class of '40, as Doris would say, five years after the war - World War II - ended, twice as many Americans graduated from college. That's just the college part. I mean, as Steve was saying about the suburbs, there were 13 million homes built in the 50's, 11 million outside of there with GI loans. I mean, it just - it did transform the country.

JIM LEHRER: Michael, was the transformation intentional, or was it an accidental end result of the GI Bill?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: You know, so much of it was accidental, and, you know, we historians, all of us, we love to see a situation where a leader wants something done and then 50 years later it's exactly as he or she wanted, and the amazing thing is that Roosevelt didn't really spend much time on this. He signed this bill two weeks after D-Day. He had spent much less thought on this than he did on most of the New Deal, but if you look at the effect of this, this had much greater impact on bringing Americans into the middle class than everything Roosevelt had tried to do over eight years in the 1930's, and there were all sorts of other unexpected consequences. One was the fact that Americans did move to the suburbs, a good thing in many ways because a lot of people owned houses that they never could have before the war. They used to be renters; they were owners after World War II. But also, houses and then later the interstate highway system caused the cities to decay, so the result of this one bill that didn't even get very much attention - I look back at the newspapers - it really was below the fold on many major newspapers in June of 1944 - had this enormous impact on America, mainly good, but in some ways problematical.

JIM LEHRER: Do you read the record the same way, or that what they were really aiming to do was to reward the veterans, not to change American society, but it just happened?

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Oh, yes, that's absolutely right, and let's remember, this does go back to the Revolutionary War. Revolutionary War soldiers got land bonuses after the war was over and America has always tried to do something for its veterans after the Civil War - didn't do very well after World War I, which is why the Bonus Mark had to take place. But the GI Bill was designed to help veterans, not to transform America. No one had that idea in mind. But I'll tell you - millions of GIs who never, never dreamed that they might be able to go to college suddenly had the opportunity, and these guys went, and they became - there's a teacher in this country who isn't aware of this - the best students we've ever had. God, they worked so hard, and they - all of them - came back to America feeling I just wasted the best years of my life. I know how to man a machine gun; I know how to fire a mortar; but I can't make a living out of this. And now they had college opened up to them, and these guys went on a make of 21 hours a semester, 24 hours a semester, and they worked. They just wanted to get that education. I lived in a small college town in Wisconsin, and the houses all around us were divided up into little rooms where the GIs could stay. We had a basketball court in our backyard, and these guys would come over and we'd play - I was 10 years old - we would play basketball together - and skins - damned near every one of them had a star. And the only recreation they ever took was we'd do an hour of basketball and then it was right back to the books for them, and they're the students that every teacher in this country would just kill to have.

JIM LEHRER: But, Steve, what drove them to go to school? They didn't think about going to college when they went into the army. What happened in the army that - to cause them to take advantage of the GI Bill when they got out?

STEPHEN AMBROSE: They matured. They came to see the benefits that are available if you go out and get yourself educated and then if you work at it, and they brought to going to college a sense of responsibility and a sense of "I want to get ahead." One of the things that the army or the navy or the air force or the coast guard or the marines have done for them was - they could see - you do your job, you do it well, you're going to get promoted. And if you do that job well, you're going to get promoted again, and pretty soon you're going to be in officer's candidate school. And then you're going to get a battlefield commission and then you're going to go from lieutenant to captain and captain to major and so on. They saw it with their own eyes. They experienced with their own bodies the joys of moving ahead.

JIM LEHRER: And, Doris, to use the word transforming society, I mean, the legacy of what happened to those World War II vets continues to this day, does it not, in our society?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, without question, it's the generation that really built the whole decades that followed after that. You know, just following on what Steve said, most of the people who went into the GI - into the soldier's war - had not left their counties; they hadn't traveled much in the United States. So suddenly they are in this war; they're all over the world; they see things they have never seen before. So possibilities open to them, and I think that's partly what led to that changing attitude toward their educational possibilities I'm going to take advantage of as well. The other thing that's so interesting to remember is that during this debate it was opened up as a possibility that the war workers at home would be eligible as well for the GI Bill of Rights, and think of what that would have meant. Women - 60 percent of the jobs in the shipyards and the airplane factories held by women - instead of those women going home and being thrown out of work and then becoming a generation that really didn't move forward until the next generation, think of the social revolution that might have prevailed.

JIM LEHRER: You know, Haynes, it's staggering to think also what if there had been no GI Bill?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Really, this word "transforming" that he used, Steven used, that's what it did. I mean, the country - we were a class country; we're not supposed to be, this democracy - equality - up from the bottom - make it on your own. Horatio Alger - all of that - but this made it possible to go to college, and that wasn't the case of most Americans. They actually had the opportunity. And the irony of this - we're talking about - this was the biggest government grant - in effect - it was the government - federal government -- because (a) people hate the government. This was once there was no debate about it. There's no controversy about it. There's no ideological argument about it.

JIM LEHRER: Why is that, Michael? Why is there no argument? Why does everybody - whether you're from the very far right or the very far left or Republican or Democrat and everything else in-between, everybody loves the GI Bill -

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Because it succeeded so well - that's the first thing. And the other thing -

JIM LEHRER: Not everybody wanted society transformed, did they?

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: No, absolutely. At the time that the bill was debated in Congress it passed only by a very slim margin, and, in fact, a lot of particularly Republicans said let's not pass this thing because a big part of the GI Bill was to give returning vets $20 a week for 52 weeks. They felt that would encourage sloth; that people would not try to get jobs. They thought that this would extend the welfare state, rather than do the opposite. But the other thing I think really endures as a part of America's philosophy is this linked the idea of service to education. You serve the country; the government pays you back by allowing you educational opportunities you otherwise wouldn't have had, and that in turn helps to approve this society. That's something that goes al the way back to the time of he Revolution, and I think it's one reason why we think of it so fondly.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah.

And, Steve, do you agree that this country that we live in today was changed by the GI Bill? I mean, there are things -

STEPHEN AMBROSE: Absolutely. Listen, Haynes and I - (laughter) - just think what it did in Madison or in Cambridge or in East Lansing or in Berkeley. The American educational establishment of today, which is the envy of the world, was made by the GI Bill and those veterans who came back brought about this enormous expansion and jobs for professors and jobs for technicians and jobs in the laboratories and students going to school learning and then going out into the world and applying what they have learned - the giving of modern America - listen - these GIs, and that includes the marines and the navy and the air force of course - these GIs made modern America, and they did it because the government had enough sense to say we're going to educate these guys; we're not going to be stingy as we were after Word War II; we're going to give these guys an opportunity - and they could go to Harvard - they could go to Stanford - they could go to the University of Chicago - they could go - as Art Buchwald did - to the Sorbonne in Paris and get 50 bucks a month if they weren't married, 75 if they were. Later on, that figure was moved up, and they could and study and work and improve themselves, and the institutions that served them, that grew out of this - like the state teacher's colleges in Wisconsin -- or like Harvard and all the others in between - they all benefited from it.

JIM LEHRER: And, Doris, there's also the housing thing. I mean, it revolutionized the way people live in this country, to this day, right?

DORIS KEARNS GOODWIN: Oh, absolutely. I mean, most of those people were living in cities, often on the wrong side of the tracks, and then they got a chance to own their own home. I mean, I can remember every single father on my block love that little tiny patch of grass that they mowed every Saturday because it was their own home for the first time that they had ever experienced that, but I think there's also the deeper promise - all those promises that brought people to our shores from the very beginning, that in this country there was opportunity to extend yourself to the limits of your ability. Education provided that opportunity for millions of people, made the promise of America real from the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave them a little patch of land, now to that home that they could own and the education to allow them to be what they could be. It's a great moment, and I'm so glad we're able to remember it like this.

JIM LEHRER: Michael.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: I hate to be a downer. One thing that it didn't work so well at was helping black Americans. Many black Americans who got GI benefits could not get into some of these towns - Levittown on Long Island was segregated. You couldn't buy a house if you were black. Many colleges -

JIM LEHRER: The federal government - the GI Bill law did not resolve that.

MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: No. Would give you the money and would give you the money to go to a school, but oftentimes colleges were segregated too. It took civil rights legislation on the Supreme Court in the 50s and 60s to really make the GI Bill do what it ultimately was able to do.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. What would you add to the housing things, Haynes?

HAYNES JOHNSON: Well, I think the nature of the country and the way we live today, the highways, the cars, the suburban element of it is - that's what America is now. We are no longer in the central cities of our country, and the idea - what Michael is talking about - civil rights - that came later. We focused on civil rights and women's rights - tremendous changes there - but this one came first - and then the integration of the armed forces and then the civil rights, and they all kind of together, I think, really made the difference.

JIM LEHRER: Well, it'sstunning - and you have all said it - how one piece of legislation could have such an effect and once you start thinking about it, those effects grow and grow and grow. And thank you all four very much.

GWEN IFILL: Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a Norman Rockwell retrospective, author Richard Louv, essayist Roger Rosenblatt and remembering Harold Nicholas.

FOCUS - ALL-AMERICAN ARTIST

GWEN IFILL: Next, a new look at an all- American artist. Ray Suarez has that story.

RAY SUAREZ: What do you see when you look at a Norman Rockwell painting? Freckled, apple-cheeked children with up-turned noses? Solid, strong, nice-looking men? Pretty women, but not so pretty as to alienate the average viewer? That America of small towns and farms-- is that where you live?

VISITOR: We think about the subject and not the quality of the art work. And the art work is tremendous, so they are very nice for art's sake, and I can put up with the corniness, too. (Laughs)

VISITOR: When I thought about coming here, I thought, "I would like that to be my life." I think his artwork is so happy. His paintings are... They just bring joy, every single one, almost, just makes me feel like a kid again.

VISITOR: I don't consider him saccharine at all. I don't know many people that don't really enjoy looking at his paintings. They just... Brings a smile to your face.

RAY SUAREZ: Norman Rockwell himself said, "I've always wanted everybody to like my work. I could never be satisfied with just the approval of the critics. So I've painted pictures that didn't disturb anybody, that I knew everyone would understand and like." And that makes perfect sense when you consider where the artist reached his public-- in mass-produced magazine covers, and advertisements. Rockwell's images grab our attention in just a few seconds. The plot is easy to understand, instantly readable. The drama is filled with recognizable characters. Norman Rockwell did 322 covers for the weekly magazine "The Saturday Evening Post" over nearly half a century. All of them, along with the original oils that became the covers and ads, are part of the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist's work, since his death in 1978, now on display at Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art. There are images commissioned for Boy Scout calendars and advertisements, each capturing a slice of American life.

MAUREEN HART-HENNESSEY, Curator, Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People: Rockwell had success very early in his career and I think he always knew that he was very, very, good at what he did.

RAY SUAREZ: Maureen Hart-Hennessey is the curator of "Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American people."

MAUREEN HART-HENNESSEY: I think it probably bothered him very much that he was dismissed as being merely, or only an illustrator. He is quoted as having said that a lot of people came up to him and said, "I don't know much about art, but I like your art." And wishing that just once, somebody would say, "I know a lot about art, and I like your art."

RAY SUAREZ: During his life, Rockwell didn't get the kind of respect he sought. But today, many critics and art historians are ready to give him his due, as a skillful painter, and a chronicler of American life. Rockwell was born in 1894 in New York City. As a teenager, he left high school for art school, and started getting paid for his work before he was 20. His work spanned most of the 20th century. His paintings asked young men to join the fight in the first world war, urged factory workers to keep the boys supplied in the second, and showedus astronauts landing on the moon in 1969. Rockwell was inspired to paint a series of patriotic images after hearing Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 state of the union address in which the President outlined what he called the four basic freedoms.

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN ROOSEVELT: The first is freedom of speech and expression everywhere in the world, the second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way everywhere in the

world, the third is freedom from want, and the fourth is freedom from fear.

RAY SUAREZ: Commissioned by the Office of War Information, a propaganda arm of the U.S. Government, the paintings are among the most reproduced in history. More than one million people saw "the four freedoms" during a nationwide tour which raised $132 million in war bonds. The paintings show his real affection for common folk, his deep patriotism, and in "Freedom from Want," perhaps his best known picture, you can see Rockwell's mastery of light and color; the curtains, the apron, the tablecloth and the platter all in subtly different shades of white. The artistry itself presents a predicament. Though America was torn by rapid breakneck economic and technological change, Depression and war, Rockwell used his prodigious talent in the service of business. The "Prayerful Silence," worthy of a Flemish master, sold raisins. His use of models from his New England home towns results in an America that is virtually all white. The cities, teeming with immigrants from around the world, and their children, the suffering and desperation of the 30's, the lives of millions of industrial workers rarely appeared. Instead, we got prom couples, cute as buttons; dogs that always seem to stay puppies; lovable old codgers, and grandmothers who look like, well, grannies -- a world where it rarely rained-- that is, until the later years. In 1963, Rockwell left "the Saturday Evening Post" and began work for "Look" magazine where he explored more controversial issues such as housing integration and school desegregation, as in this work, "The Problem we all Live with."

MAUREEN HART-HENNESSEY: "The Problem we all Live with" was inspired by Rockwell's remembering the story of ruby bridges, who is the African American girl who was the only black child sent to desegregate an all-white school in New Orleans, and this happened in 1960, and she really was tormented-- literally had to run a gauntlet every day of white parents throwing things at her and yelling at her, and was accompanied to school every day by the U.S. Marshals. But there's a real violence inherent, I think, in that scene. You can see where the tomato has been thrown at the... At the child, and the words that are scrawled on the wall behind her that it could explode at any moment-- and he really captures that.

RAY SUAREZ: Most of Rockwell's characters were real people. His neighbors were his models, as was his son, now a sculptor, Peter Rockwell.

PETER ROCKWELL, Norman Rockwell's Son: There's one particular picture which I've felt strongly about since then because he has me in it looking like the wimp I was when I was 13. And I keep looking at it and think, did I look that awful and did I have, did I actually wear those silly glasses then? There was one time when I'd posed for "The Boy in the Dining Car," and it was the hottest day of august of 1946, I think. And the car, being in the Bronx, New York central yards, was not air-conditioned, so it was terribly hot inside. And so he finally said, look, he said, "if you'll just pose and do it, as soon as it's over I'll take you to FAO Schwartz and buy you anything you want." (Laughs)

RAY SUAREZ: Did it work?

PETER ROCKWELL: Yes, it did.

RAY SUAREZ: Curator Hart-Hennessey gives us a guided tour of one Rockwell masterpiece.

MAUREEN HART-HENNESSEY: "The Girl at the Mirror" was done for the cover of the "post" in 1954, and it's probably one of his best-known, and I would even venture to say best-loved images. Her doll's been thrown aside, but she's still within arm's reach, almost saying, "well, I'm not quite through playing with her yet." And she has her makeup and the comb and brush very close at hand, and she has this wonderful look on her face that's kind of a mixture of sadness and wonder. She's questioning what will... What will come next. People very much respond to this picture because I think it does relate to that period that we've all gone through-- those horrible, wonderful years of adolescence where one minute it's wonderful and the next moment we just don't know what to do.

RAY SUAREZ: The tremendous attention to detail in these canvases was all the more remarkable when you consider that virtually no one saw these paintings as paintings, only as reproductions in the flattened out, less subtly colored world of the mass-produced magazine cover or display ad. That didn't matter to Rockwell. He took great pains for authenticity, and packed his paintings with detail.

MAUREEN HART-HENNESSEY: It's clear that Rockwell also saw the paintings as a final in and of themselves. There are little jokes in some of the paintings. There is a painting of the baby sitter that was done for the cover of the "Post" where she has a diaper over the arm of the chair and there's a diaper pin in it. Rockwell stuck a safety pin through the canvas. So, I think he was very conscious of the importance of the texture and ... the surface of the painting as well.

RAY SUAREZ: Still, for years, Rockwell's realistic images stood in stark contrast to the 20th century's abstract and expressionist art, the tumult and self-examination of the artists around him. His art was displayed on newsstands, not in museums.

SPOKESMAN: I'm going to kind of put you on the spot. I'm going to ask you who is your favorite artist?

NORMAN ROCKWELL: Well, of all time? There's no doubt. Rembrandt-- yeah. I mean, he was the greatest. I mean, he... To me a Rembrandt painting, any of his paintings, they're like a beautiful symphony. I mean, they have these great, deep notes. He understood humanity. And he's just the greatest.

PETER ROCKWELL: For paintings he was... He was a real intellectual in the sense that he was a very rationale composer of paintings. He knew a great deal about European painting.

RAY SUAREZ: And could put his own technical prowess to work as a comment on high art. Here, a very proper museum-goer considers a very good Jackson Pollock imitation, of course painted by Norman Rockwell. An art student examines an old master, much to the delight of the lady herself, and the gentlemen in nearby paintings. His strong and confident "Rosie the Riveter," first was painted by Michelangelo as Isaiah on the ceiling of the Sistine chapel. In 1960, "The Saturday Evening Post" published a biography of the by-now very famous artist... And to illustrate the cover? Well, who else?

PETER ROCKWELL: So there's this whole series of self-portraits going on. Each one is a different character. He's slightly caricaturing the figure sitting there on the chair. The face in the mirror is very intense and very serious and interestingly enough you don't see the eyes because the glasses are reflecting. That's one of thethings about the painting, you never see his eyes in the painting, because the only eyes you see are in the painting he's painting which has this nice guy Norman Rockwell image, the pipe sticking up, the whole thing, which is quite different from the one you're seeing here. Then he's got pinned up on it, he's got a Durer's self-portrait, a Rembrandt's self-portrait, a Picasso self-portrait behind a woman and a Van Gogh self- portrait. Is he saying that these self- portraits that we see of theirs are really not the real them? Or is he just saying this is, you know, this is, these are my great gods. In other words, he's thinking about self-portraiture. Yet, at the same time, he's giving you so many different images of himself that he's never saying who he is.

RAY SUAREZ: So, he's asking a lot of questions and he's not really giving any answers?

PETER ROCKWELL: Well, yes. Exactly. That's the whole point of the painting in one level is to ask a lot of questions. The other point of the painting is to say what I paint is not reality -- what I paint is a construction -- because, of course, the portrait that he's painting on there is a construction of reality.

RAY SUAREZ: "Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People" leaves Washington's Corcoran Gallery on September 24. It then travels to San Diego, Phoenix, Stockbridge, Massachusetts, and New York City between now and March, 2002.

CONVERSATION

GWEN IFILL: Now, another of our conversations about new books, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: The book is "Fly-Fishing for Sharks: An American Journey" by Richard Louv. It's his account of his two years traveling around the country, exploring how and why anglers fish, and why they love it so. An avid fisherman himself, Louv is also a columnist for the "San Diego Union Tribune." Welcome, Richard. Why did you embark on this book? It's hard to imagine a journalist traveling around the country talking to, say, ordinary people about why they play tennis. Why fishing?

RICHARD LOUV, Author, "Fly-Fishing for Sharks:" Well, first, for personal reasons. I was going over some new book ideas with my agent. I had written five books prior to that, and I said, "you know, all I have here are depressing social issues again, and every time I think of writing another book about a depressing social issue, I get a headache." And he said, "well, have you ever thought about writing a book about fishing?" And I said, "why?" And he said, "Because your affect changes. Every time you talk about it, it makes you happy." And that really, I think, is the key to why one would look at America through this window of fishing. I also wanted to look at America in a new way. I'd been all across the country on two other books, and when you look at America through this window, this very strange and unique window of fishing, you see an entirely different country, and it's a much better country than I thought existed.

MARGARET WARNER: Explain that. What do you mean?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, it's a very generous country. I mean, really the truth about America isn't in the headlines. It's in the small details. It's in the folks you meet, you know, when I walked up the East River into Spanish Harlem, and then the next day over to Harlem and talked to the guys that fish along there. You know, it's in the folks who are so passionate about fly- fishing in Montana. It's in the women who have learned that fishing is a terrific thing to do, and that they're often better at it than men are. It's in the stories that people tell about their lives, and about America. And thisisn't a cynical country when you see it through the window of fishing. These people are passionate. They're not cynical. They're engaged with nature, which is something we're also losing in the country, I think.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, I was fascinated to read in the book that... Even though I love to fish, I didn't realize it's the number-one American outdoor pastime. What did you find is the appeal? Why do people love fishing so? What does it give them?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, you're right. 44 million people fish regularly. It's a $50 billion industry. It's grown a lot over the last 15 years. The best way to explain, I think, why people fish is a Montana guide I was with going down a river in Montana. We spent all morning fishing and hadn't caught anything. And there was an old guy in the front of the boat, and I was in the back. And this old Montana guide, we finally caught one-- the old guy in the front caught one-- got all excited. He was grinning; I was grinning. I turned to the guide and said, "you know, what is it about fishing?" And he looked at me and says, "well, it changes everything." And I said, "what do you mean, it changes everything? Do you mean that literally or metaphysically?" And he says, "well, both." And I think that is kind of the key to why people fish. In that moment when you catch a fish nothing else matters. The past disappears. The future doesn't exist. You don't think about it. You don't think about work. It really puts you in connection with something really greater than yourself.

MARGARET WARNER: You quoted one... I think he was a guide who talked about that you almost enter something he called river time through the intense concentration.

RICHARD LOUV: Right, an altered state, really, and anglers all over the country talked about that altered state. And also, women who fish often talked about their interaction with nature being different than men's. I was impressed by that. I have a phrase in the book called "deep fishing," and this is when people really... everyday life disappears. They are so in touch with nature and so aware of all the life, not only in the water, but around the water. I mean, to be a good fly-fisher, you've almost got to be an entomologist.

MARGARET WARNER: Sure. You have to know what the bugs there mean about which... what the fish are eating and...

RICHARD LOUV: Right, right. But this river time or this deep fishing, this altered state goes really beyond kind of intellectual knowledge about nature. It goes into another space.

MARGARET WARNER: People often talk about the spiritual side of fishing, and I noticed that in your book, in your conversations, a lot of people talked about their connection with God and nature and their place in it. But, I mean, did you find that really exists, that really is for real f a lot of people?

RICHARD LOUV: Yeah, it is. Some anglers will go out of their way to put that aside and not talk in those terms, but many, many did, from all walks of life. And by the way, that's one of the issues, one of the reasons why fishing is a good window to look at America through, is this really is our common language. I mean, every family has somebody who fishes in it who tells stories about fishing.

MARGARET WARNER: How did you find that fishers who are, many, so in touch with nature, how do they resolve the conflict between that and the fact that fishing is hunting and often killing, though a lot of people now catch and release the fish?

RICHARD LOUV: I think the folks who think about it as the spiritual endeavor probably understand that more deeply. And PETA, the organization, a leading animal rights organization, has targeted fishing and in fact e starting to go into schools, starting to stand outside the schools that won't let them in, and convince kids that this isn't a good thing to do. I think they raise good ethical issues, but so have anglers, f for a long time, about catch and release. And, you know, I think the animal rights folks fail to put this in a wider context, which is who is it that cares about those streams? I mean, there are dams coming down in America because people have kept fishing journals for hundreds of years that go back... in their family, they've watched how rivers and streams have changed, and they present that as evidence. And dams have been brought down because of that. Also, there's this whole issue of direct experience of nature. Children are, I think, losing that sense of direct experience. I mean, as by boomers, we're probably the last Americans to have some kind of direct familial contact with agriculture, with nature. You know, we all had an uncle or an aunt or a grandfather who lived on a farm. Maybe we visited them. In 1993, the U.S. Census Bureau quit giving out its report on the farm population in America because there isn't any left, for the most part. So we may be the last generation that really, you know, had that direct experience. Now, as we begin to urbanize more, two things happen when we urbanize. One is we tend to romanticize nature on the one hand, or we forget about it and we don't care about it. I think kids today in particular are starved for some direct connection with nature, and fishing has been a traditional way to for them to do it. And the truth is that it is messy. It's morally messy. And I don't think that anyone can really learn truly about nature through binoculars or on videotape; they have to get their hands dirty.

MARGARET WARNER: So when you say morally messy, because you do have to confront this issue of whether you're taking a life...

RICHARD LOUV: Yes, yeah. And you have to understand too that that life that you may or may not be taking may have taken a life that morning. I mean, that bass may have eaten a duckling three hours earlier.

MARGARET WARNER: What are the consequences of children losing this familial or intimate connection with nature, a whole generation that doesn't?

RICHARD LOUV: Well, first, to describe that loss, in interviewing kids around the country, I think the polarity of that relationship between children and nature has reversed. When I was a kid, I spent a lot of time in the woods, in the fields, and along the creek, and they were my woods and my fields. I owned them in my mind, to the extent that I pulled out hundreds of survey stakes that I knew had something to do with the bulldozers. But I didn't know anything about global warming or any of the great ecological issues, didn't know that my woods were connected to other woods. Kids today can tell you anything about global warming or the Amazon Rain Forest. What they can't tell you is the last time they went out and experienced the woods in solitude. So with that reversal comes all kinds of implications. What happens to a kid's emotional health, given that disconnection? What happens to a kid's creativity, given that disconnection? What happens to environmentalism? I mean, when you look at the studies of where environmentalists came from, they all had that direct experience with nature when they were kids.

MARGARET WARNER: So we'll give them all a fishing rod. Thanks, Richard Louv, very much.

RICHARD LOUV: Thanks.

ESSAY - PUSUIT OF HAPPINESS

GWEN IFILL: Now, essayist Roger Rosenblatt offers his perspective on what makes Americans happy.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: Leave it to Thomas Jefferson to start the country on its way by wishing it a mission seemingly impossible. Taking John Locke's triad of human rights-- life, liberty and property-- Jefferson changed the third item to "the pursuit of happiness"-- something that no other civilization-- monarchial, totalitarian or democratic-- would dare to set forth. The pursuit of happiness as a right. In a recent article in the "New York Times Magazine," author Andrew Delbanco wonders about that, noting wisely that, Jefferson's language aside, that right has never been self- evident. Before the 18th century enlightenment, happiness was consigned to the hereafter; one suffered on earth to be blissful in heaven. By the time America realized itself, happiness could be seen in good works; socially useful projects. In our own dot-com and NASDAQ times, happiness may have returned to Locke's property again. The pursuit of happiness: The pursuit of a second home, a convertible, a dream boat. On July 4, one might look into this idea. Did Jefferson design a country in which along with life and liberty came the right to pursue stock options, a Picasso at an auction, the lottery, one's own Lear Jet, a rented bungalow in the Hamptons for $350,000. How happy can one get? The question is not rhetorical. Not only does one fail to buy happiness by the acquisition of goods, one knows that one fails.

ACTOR: I've got a man In London who buys all my clothes.

ROGER ROSENBLATT: The splendid scene of the shirts in the "Great Gatsby. Robert Redford as Gatsby shows daisy his magnificent pile of shirts-- linen, silk, flannel, in pastel colors of faint orange and apple green. Daisy sobs out of control. Why? Because she's a little nitwit, to be sure, but also because she holds the American dream and the American heartbreak both in her hands. So are we, when asserting the right to pursue happiness, actually speaking about the pursuit of unhappiness? Delbanco strongly suggests this in his essay, and it's a tantalizing, if unnerving, thought. Sob if you will, the eternal round of getting and yearning fires the American engine. The state of not having gives us the frontier again. Ah, the Mississippi. Ah, the Rockies. Oh, pioneers.

SPOKESPERSON: Three, two, one...

ROGER ROSENBLATT: When we run out of real estate, we head for the moon, the planets, the stars. When we run out of those, we can always buy shirts, the getting of which throws us back like lightweight fabrics upon our eternally unsatisfied selves. "Heaven," Fred Astaire sang, "I'm in heaven."

FRED ASTAIRE: (singing) I'm in heaven, and my heart beats so that I can hardly speak. And I seem to find the happiness I seek...

ROGER ROSENBLATT: "I seem to find it, but I don't." The things we want that we can have always imply the things we cannot have. Is unhappiness really the goal? That would be strange, weirdly self-punishing. Of course happiness doesn't need to consist of stuff. One can have a lot of fun and sorrow as a material girl or boy. But there is also the less- alloyed happiness of family, of friends, of giving help to others, of the satisfaction of work. Pursue those things with impunity. Happiness, while never permanent, is nonetheless real. Here's a possible answer to the problem Jefferson gave us: Life and liberty allow us to pursue happiness any way we wish. If you want to pursue a pile of shirts, see where it gets you. If you want to pursue a good mate, children, neighbors, a decent job, a sense of community, the right to relieve the burdens of the poor, see where that gets you. The pursuit of happiness becomes the pursuit of the definition of happiness. And if that is what Jefferson was offering, it is as complex and challenging as a right can get. Now that you're free, America, what is it that you want? That is the question one asks every morning, every night, every July 4. (Fireworks exploding) I'm Roger Rosenblatt.

FINALLY - IN MEMORIAM

GWEN IFILL: Finally tonight, remembering a song and dance man who, with grace, agility, and fancy footwork soared past the racial barriers of his day to make a career on stage and in the movies. Harold Nicholas died yesterday. Fred Astaire said the Nicholas brothers' leaps and splits in the 1943 movie "Stormy Weather," made this the greatest musical number he had ever seen. In this clip from the movie, Harold Nicholas starts out on your right.

(SCENE FROM MOVIE)

GWEN IFILL: Harold Nicholas is survived by his older brother, Fayard. He was 79 years old.

RECAP

GWEN IFILL: Again, the major stories of this holiday Tuesday: Fourth of July celebrations from coast to coast, and Saudi Arabia breaks with OPEC to announce it will soon raise oil production. Have a nice holiday evening. We'll see you on-line and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Gwen Ifill. Thank you and good night.