My line of work was never easy. But if I'd been willing to settle for some lowly trade where everything was handed to me, I would have been settling for something beneath me. As a young man growing up in the most precarious time in history, an age when nothing was certain, I felt innately that it was more than my desire to make a mark on the direction of the world, but my obligation. I knew I would have been doing the country a disservice by doing otherwise. If there were to be an example for what the perfect citizen should be, I would embody that. I had set out to make Kent Mansley a household name. I succeeded, in a way I never would have chosen.
Every since I was a boy I had a sense that I was destined to be part of something more than even I could have predicted. There was a naïvely false sense of security growing up in 1920s Boston. I was untouched by the First World War, but my father had to live with the aftermath every day. As a child I could not connect my father being thousands of miles away in another country with shooting at other men with why he walked so slowly. All I knew was never to mention it to him, to never speak at all unless spoken to for that matter, or I'd often be met with a belt. I admired the man for his past, but he stubbornly hid it from me and drowned himself in alcohol. My mother eased my curiosity by saying "that bad men in another country hurt pappy's leg." It wasn't until years later that I learned that my father had taken several bullets to the leg to scramble out of the trench and blast the brains out of a German taking aim on an American officer.
This proved to me at a very young age that country was worthy of being protected. My father's sacrifice left me with a reverence for America that has never faded. While I was impressed by what my mother told me about my father, I couldn't fully appreciate the sacrifice he made. All I had ever known was the stability and order my parents had built up. They never let me or my brothers and sisters forget to be gracious for the life we were used to growing up with. I had no concept of the world beyond Boston, but that didn't matter much.
Nothing I had heard of other places gave me any desire to see foreign shores. Although I was the second of five children, we lived comfortably if modestly. Our childhood was sustained by our actions and our love, but mostly our cooperation. Church was our ultimate bond; nothing could shake my parents' faith in God, and I have since believed that He will carry us through any struggle. Nothing is ever easy, but only as intended.
My older brother was everything my parents dreamed of and more. There were no holes left for the rest of us to fill. He was handsome, athletic, and hoped to be a college professor. I knew my mother loved all of us, and I even felt she had a weakness for me. But there was no competing for my father's pride. I worked through school, and emerged at the top of my class with an acceptance letter to Cornell. I carried my family's traditions to school with me, but when I left the home of my parents, I never looked back. A humble Boston home was good enough for them, but more was expected of me than that. My future was to be more than a house on a quiet street.
I put myself through school. My father praised my siblings for their future plans while telling me to set my sights on a real job. I will admit, the idea of relenting and joining the police in town didn't seem so horrible. My father and older brother had briefly had a bet going to see how long I would last at Cornell. Only my mother was willing to accept it. She wrote to me often. To me, even if only one other person saw greatness in my future, I was right. But that did nothing to make me feel better in the present. I am ashamed to say that after a particularly difficult few weeks, I was prepared to leave college behind and pursue a more conventional dream like the rest of my family had been long since expecting me to. Until December 7, 1941 when two things happened. My father had come down with the pneumonia that would eventually take his life how the Germans couldn't. America's innocence was forever lost and security compromised when the Japanese launched their attack on Pearl Harbor. I had met with plenty of personal setbacks at that time. Those things could all be taken into stride. It took a deliberate assault on this nation to alarm me.
Of course I was discouraged that my father died still disappointed with me. Only a few months earlier, he had been sitting in the kitchen, excited about my sister's plans to marry in a year. His big grin quickly disappeared when I entered the room. Even though I had not been involved in the conversation, he just kept on going with his train of thought and made me part of it. "Kent, isn't it about time you put all this nonsense behind you and find yourself a real job. And a girl, maybe?" He said, admiring a photo of my older brother and his wife on the mantle. It must be nice when everything is handed to you. I was still prepared to earn my high life, even if he would never see me prove him wrong.
For all the power I had given to my family, I was preoccupied certainly until the end of the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor that winter. The nation that held the fate of the war in hand, even while only watching from across the ocean, was brought to its knees. It amazed me that power was so precarious. Until then, it had been enough to accept that God was on our side and we would be carried through trouble safely. Not so anymore. I was fortunate enough to never be drafted for the war. That didn't leave me untouched. My older brother who seemed to have everything also had a call to the army, but he emerged in 1945, having seen only six months of combat. He still walked steadily on both feet, but he no longer seemed immortal to me after his return. He had been fired on, his life sometimes only inches away from being taken or destroyed. I was eager to see the Germans get what was coming to them after causing the United States to be dragged into two wars and threatening the stability I had known growing up. I was never convinced that after two attempts at world domination, that the country would suddenly fit into a calm world. I'd die before watching America turn into a nation of heel-clicking slaves to the krauts.
As I stared up a massive set of marble steps that I was about to ascend for the first time, there was nothing that didn't flash through my head. It was 1947, and my first day of federal work had come. I had had Washington on my mind for years, but I had never quite pieced together where I would fit into the inner workings. As a boy, I had always proclaimed to my siblings, "I'm gonna be President!" Typically me – I was reaching for the top right from the start. It wasn't long before I learned that there would be small steps in the middle, and I was ready to take the first ones as I started up the long staircase.