I’m writing this to you from New York City.

I’m here with my son, Hayden—he’s 17—and we’re scouting universities.

And as I sit in this country, watching him walk through these towering campuses, full of ambition and wonder, I find myself reflecting on two stories I heard recently. Both American. Both powerful. Both true. 

And both soul-stirring. 

One happened in the 1920s.
The other, in the 1940s.
Two different men.
Two violent deaths.
Two lives that, through tragedy, reshaped a nation.