Larger Events Can Summon Voluntary Cooperation

As the high school prom and graduation season arrives, with its increased concern about drinking and dangerous driving, I think back to my graduation from Roosevelt High School in Minneapolis.

The date, June 4, was almost six months after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but World War II did not deter many of our class of some 450 from following a graduation tradition of celebrating at Excelsior Amusement Park about 12 miles out of town. So after my best friend, John Brady, and I collected our diplomas and turned in our caps and gowns, we headed for Excelsior in my dad’s car with our respective girlfriends, Phyllis and LaVonne. Graduates from other schools also poured in.

At 1 a.m., the park closed and all the celebrants jumped into their cars and headed to Minneapolis on a four-lane highway that ran through what was then mostly open country.

But there was a wartime speed limit of 40 miles per hour, to preserve rubber and fuel. Much of the rubber for car tires had come from East Asia, which was under Japanese control. Petroleum was needed for the ships, planes, tanks and trucks of the military.

Which would win - the government’s speed limit or the high spirits of the teenagers? Score one for the speed limit. I drove 40 miles an hour and no one passed us. I marveled about it even then.

Why did we do it? Our cars could have gone faster. We were no more safety-minded than normal. A handful of highway patrol officers couldn’t have stopped hundreds of young drivers determined to race to town.

Is there any answer besides patriotic altruism?

The war made us think beyond ourselves. Restricting our speed was a contribution we could make to the war effort. We didn’t want to be disloyal to those in the military, which by then included friends or relatives of some drivers and would soon include many of us.

Indeed, graduation removed one of the barriers that had kept us out of the military. Some grads enlisted right away, while others waited for the presidential “greetings” that would not be long in coming. I went into the Army and Brady into the Air Corps, where he was killed when his plane went down on a Pacific Island.

But that night draft notices were in the future, even if only months away. I can only conclude that at the time, all those newly graduated drivers simply wanted to do the right thing for their country.