Ordinary People

The story behind Norman Rockwell's celebrated painting

- STEVE HAGGERTY

Jarvis Rockwell remembers Thanksgivings with his father, Norman, as a joyous time, when the renowned and prolific painter and illustrator could relax with his family. Indeed, Norman Rockwell embodied the very essence of the holiday he has come to be so associated with, particularly through one painting that has become iconic. “My father was wonderful at Thanksgiving,” Jarvis told me.

His mother, Mary, and the family cook would pull out the white tablecloth and sterling silverware. The family would gather at the table, and his father proudly carved the turkey, with Jarvis and his younger brothers, Thomas and Peter, looking on.

But the Thanksgiving of 1942, when Jarvis was 12, was anything but relaxing. World War II raged in Europe and the Pacific. Fear and uncertainty gripped the country, from the small New England village of West Arlington, Vermont, where the Rockwells lived, to the biggest cities. Tires, gasoline, sugar and coffee were rationed. Gratitude too was hard to come by. Only the previous December had President Franklin Roosevelt signed a resolution establishing the fourth Thursday of November as America’s official day of Thanksgiving.

Norman Rockwell’s stress was building. He was months behind on a commission for The Saturday Evening Post, one of the country’s most popular magazines, for a series of paintings representing the four freedoms enumerated by President Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union address. Roosevelt had urged all Americans to support the European democracies fighting Hitler’s forces: “This nation has placed…its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere.” By the end of 1941, the United States had entered the war.