In just a few weeks, our nation will commemorate the 250th anniversary of its independence.
As we approach this historic milestone, “Think Out Loud” hears from guests whose life experiences and personal histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be an American.
Jill Gentry is the recently installed State Regent of the Oregon State Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution. Gentry is an army veteran and worked for the National Security Agency for over 30 years before retiring to Bend and becoming involved in the DAR. Her mother and grandmother were also active DAR members. We talk to Gentry about her life of service and how she thinks about this country on its 250th anniversary.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We turn now to the next installment of our series of conversations about the 250th anniversary of the birth of this country. As we approach the historic milestone, we’ve been talking to a wide variety of people to hear how their life experiences and family histories illuminate different aspects of what it means to be American.
Jill Gentry joins me now. She is an Army veteran who worked for the National Security Agency for over 30 years before retiring to Bend. Like her mother and grandmother before her, she is now active in the Daughters of the American Revolution [DAR]. In fact, she was recently installed State Regent, or leader, of the Oregon State Society of the DAR. Jill Gentry, welcome to Think Out Loud.
Jill Gentry: Thank you so much.
Miller: I think we should start with some of the basics here for people who are not familiar with it. What is the Daughters of the American Revolution?
Gentry: Well, the Daughters of the American Revolution is a nonprofit, non-political women’s service organization. We were founded in 1890. We currently have about 190,000 members worldwide, and over the course of years since 1890, over 1 million women have joined this organization. So we’re long lasting and we’re pretty big.
Miller: What are the membership requirements? Almost 200,000 people now. What does it take to be a member of the DAR?
Gentry: You need to be able to prove lineal descent from a Revolutionary War patriot, and a lot of times people think that a Revolutionary War patriot only means someone who fought, but that’s not necessarily true. It’s individuals who did fight in the Revolutionary War, but it’s also supporting individuals, men and women … Maybe the butcher who supplied meat for the army, or a woman who sewed, cooked or did laundry for the soldiers. It’s anyone who supported the cause. So if you descended from any of those individuals, you are eligible to join.
Miller: Who did you descend from who makes you qualify?
Gentry: John Buckland of Rhode Island.
Miller: For those of us who, I apologize, say are not familiar with him. Who was he?
Gentry: [Laughs] I don’t know a huge amount about him because there isn’t a lot that I’ve found. But he was an ensign in the army – which now, an ensign is in the Navy – but he was an ensign in the army and he was from Rhode Island. After he served for I believe two years, he retired to upstate New York. His son then moved to Ohio where six generations of my family lived in the same town where he went in Ohio, which is Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. Which is pretty, I think, impressive.
Miller: There are a couple broad categories of how people became American. There are Indigenous people who had been on this land since before Europeans or enslaved people from Africa were brought here; there were people who were brought here in chains. Descendants of immigrants from major waves of arrivals in the 1800s, early 1900s, more recent arrivals. Tomorrow, we’re gonna be talking with somebody who was just naturalized as a U.S. citizen last month.
Then there are people like you who descend from some of the earliest European arrivals on the continent. What does it mean to you personally to be able to to date your Americanness to this version of arrival?
Gentry: Well, I have to say, I’m very proud of my English, Scottish and Irish heritage. I do have a little bit of German as well. My family has always celebrated that. A lot of families don’t necessarily know where they came from. It was always drilled into me as a child from my grandparents and great-grandparents – I was lucky enough to know my great-grandparents – about where we came from and how we got here. Despite membership in the DAR, even the other sides of my family always told us stories about where they came from and the struggles of their parents and grandparents.
I think it helps you to own your ancestry when you hear those stories from your family, as opposed to reading it online somewhere. I have a long history. I was an army veteran, and I date back to a Revolutionary War patriot. But I also … My grandfather was an infantryman in World War I, and my father was a naval officer in World War II, and my father-in-law was a Vietnam veteran. I was a Cold War veteran in the army. So service to our country is something that you don’t think about. It was just something that happened, I think.
Miller: What did being a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution mean to your mother and to your grandmother? As I mentioned, you’re now the third at least in line, this matrilineal line to be members of this group. What did it mean to them?
Gentry: First of all, my grandmother’s story was very distinct in that she lived in a small city in Ohio. My grandfather owned a gas station. She worked in the office. She was surrounded by guys that were greasy and dirty all the time. Once a year, we have our National Continental Congress, our national conference in Washington DC. And she was a local leader. She was her local chapter regent. For that week, she could go to Washington DC and meet women from all over the country to learn leadership skills in various workshops and business meetings. For that week, she could be somebody else. She wasn’t working in the office at a gas station. She ended up being a national leader in DAR.
That changed her a lot because she grew up poor, and I think in her mind, maybe she wasn’t as valuable and her leadership skills weren’t as visible. So through her being active in DAR, she learned a lot about herself and she learned how to lead others. Then my mother joined as a teenager, probably because my grandmother made her.
Miller: Was dragging her away.
Gentry: Yeah, right, because at the time when you’re 18, you don’t necessarily know that you want to do these things.
Miller: Although maybe was she happy to also get away from the gas station in Ohio and go to DC for a week?
Gentry: Yes. One of her favorite stories to tell: She was 18 years old and she was going to her first national conference in DC at Continental Congress, and she was what we call a page. So she was like an assistant to the state leader from Ohio. So she ran around and did errands and things like that, as our pages still do today.
Well, she was in the lobby of her hotel and she walked right past General MacArthur. For an 18-year-old … this was right after the war, so everyone knew what General MacArthur looked like. She still tells the story about how exciting that was.
Miller: How old is your mom?
Gentry: My mom passed away about five years ago, but she lived to age 89. She was a member for 70 years in DAR.
Miller: What does it mean to you then to be carrying on this family tradition?
Gentry: To be perfectly honest, when I joined, I joined for my mother. I waited till I retired because when I was working, the meeting times in my area conflicted very much with my work schedule. There was just no way I could get away to go to meetings during the day. So when I retired and moved to Bend, we moved my mother out with us. So I joined DAR as something to do with my mom because I knew she would really like that a lot.
Then as I became more active and I realized all the different facets of DAR, that it isn’t just patriotism, that it isn’t just saving historic properties, that education is a part of it as well … We have 50 different national committees that cover 50 different areas of interest. So when you join DAR there are a lot of areas of interest that I wasn’t originally privy to. So it opened up doors for me to do things.
I enjoy literacy promotion. So I’ve been very active in my local community with my local chapter in collecting books and donating books for literacy promotion. Patriotism, of course, comes with the territory when you’ve been in the military and worked for the federal government for 30 years.
Miller: Some kind of cynicism about the bureaucracy of the country can come as well from people I’ve known and loved over the years. But I’m curious, not to skip past patriotism … Do you consider yourself to be a patriot?
Gentry: Absolutely.
Miller: What does it mean to you to be a patriot?
Gentry: Well, that I am proud of America and what it stands for. I value my civic responsibilities and try to participate in the government in ways I can, my local community. I recognize that we’re not perfect as a nation, but I know that it’s important to try to do better to make us a more perfect nation. Being in the military and working for the Defense Department – which NSA is a part of the Defense Department – I’ve lived in six foreign countries over the years. So you see America from afar. You see wonderful things, and wonderful cultures and histories in other countries, but then you come back home and you realize, “yeah, this is home.”
Other places are great and sometimes you see a lot of flaws in America, especially from afar. But when you come back home, you know that it’s home and you’re proud to be an American.
Miller: You mentioned your grandmother and your mom going to the DAR’s annual Continental Congresses. These are not historical things. This is not the origination of our country, but these are annual conferences that still happen. My understanding is you just got back from one. What was it like this year?
Gentry: Being the 250th anniversary in Washington DC added a whole different dimension to our annual Continental Congress. We get about 4,000 members who come back for that congress each year. We all stay in a very small radius of hotels that are near our headquarters at Constitution Hall. That’s also very close to the White House. So it’s a very small radius of activity, but then when you add in all the tourists and visitors that are coming for the 250th, and the roads being blocked off and sidewalks being blocked off, and it was hot and sticky. It was a very interesting week.
But it’s a time when all of us get together and share information. We hear reports from the national committees of what they’ve accomplished for the year. We hear from each state regent and what is going on in each of the states. It’s a great way to learn, get new ideas for things that maybe we could try in Oregon. So it’s a lot of learning.
Then in the evenings there’s almost always a military band that plays. We do a lot of awards to community members and especially to students. We have an annual American history essay contest for students. We have one at the elementary level and one at the high school level. Each state has a winner, and then a national winner is selected from those state winners, and that young person is recognized in Constitution Hall and is given a scholarship.
Miller: As I understand it, some of these awards, they’re called Good Citizen Awards. What’s your definition of good citizenship?
Gentry: I believe the reason that we recognize good citizens is, having been a high school student myself, as all of us have, we know that academics are quite often recognized and athletes are quite often recognized. But a student who’s maybe doing great volunteer work in the community, volunteering with veterans, volunteering with the elderly, volunteering maybe in a food pantry, but they’re not a brilliant student and they’re not an athlete, they may not get recognized in any way, shape or form. Our Good Citizen Awards are to recognize young people who are doing great things and are great citizens in their community. That’s every bit as important as being a good student or being an athlete.
Miller: Do you have any specific plans to commemorate the 250th this Saturday, this weekend, in any different way than you might normally celebrate July 4th?
Gentry: It’s funny you asked that. Actually, I am attending an old fashioned 4th of July picnic at … we own two historic properties, the Oregon DAR. One of them is Newell Pioneer Village, which is in Saint Paul. It’s adjacent to Champoeg State Park. Every year they have a 4th of July event. I’ve never been, and now as the new state regent, I will be attending for the very first time. It’s open to the public and also there’s a lot of DAR members who attend. Like it says, it’s just a typical sort of old fashioned 4th of July with hot dogs, some music, singing patriotic songs and waving flags. It’ll be great.
Miller: Jill Gentry, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it.
Gentry: Thank you.
Miller: Jill Gentry is the Oregon State Regent of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
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