Dec. 7 – Mark Summers, Thomas D. Clark Chair of History, University of Kentucky, ” A Date that will Live in Infamy”

LEXINGTON, KY – The Rotary Club of Lexington   held its weekly meeting on Thursday, Dec. 7, at The Mane on Main, Chase Bank building on Main St. The program’s speaker was Mark Summers.  Join us for his presentation ” A Day that Will Live in Infamy.’

This meeting will also be on Zoom. For the Zoom link please email, trafton@rotarylexky.org.

If you would like to have lunch, please contact Jenny@rotarylexky.org to reserve your meal.

There are few among us who would fail to recognize President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s description of December 7, 1941 as “a date that will live in infamy.”  That date, of course, saw the attack of the United States Naval Base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii by the Japanese Imperial Fleet, an event sometimes described as “one of the greatest military surprises in the history of warfare.”  To add an exclamation point to his description, in his address to Congress and the nation, Roosevelt also noted Japanese attacks on Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands, Wake Island, and Midway Island.  World War II had arrived.

Today’s speaker, Mark Summers, a professor of History in the University of Kentucky College of Arts & Science, will discuss the attack on Pearl Harbor, including why and how it happened, why America was unprepared, some disturbing side-effects and a few historical echoes that still reverberate today.

Professor Summers holds the Thomas D. Clark Chair of History at the University of Kentucky, where, in his words, he has been teaching any part of the past that they let him get away with for the last thirty-nine years.  He considers himself incredibly lucky to be in one of the few academic departments anywhere where everybody gets along so well with everybody else that he can fall asleep in faculty meetings and know that he won’t be missing much.  A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, he has written nine or ten books, including The Plundering Generation, The Era of Good Stealings, and Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion. At present, he is working on three more: one about the presidential election of 1860 that tore the country apart, another about the stolen elections that made Abraham Lincoln president, and the third about a political boss in downtown Manhattan, “Big Tim” Sullivan, who was not the worst scoundrel in the city – he was the best.

Welcome Professor Summers!