What We Buried on D-Day this Year
The life of Joe Schwarz is a eulogy for a Republican Party that no longer exists.
Susan J. Demas is Lincoln Square’s Executive Editor and a 25-year journalism veteran. Subscribe to her Substack.
Eighty-two years ago, Allied troops charged into the surf at Normandy. Thousands died, but their legacy, however tenuous, lives on — of stopping fascism, of saving democracy, of preserving the idea that free nations could endure.
This past Saturday, in a small parish in Battle Creek, Michigan, we buried Joe Schwarz. During one of our first interviews, he told me one of his formative memories was hearing the bells ring out for D-Day when he was just six years old. As the son of veterans, he was taught early on: You are here to serve.
And he did.
But you probably don’t know his name. That’s part of the point.
Joe Schwarz served one term in the United States Congress, representing a mid-Michigan district from 2005 to 2007. He was a surgeon, Vietnam veteran, and former CIA operative who did missions in North Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia to locate and liberate American prisoners of war. He was the mayor of Battle Creek. He was a state senator. He was a proud, outspoken moderate Republican who voted his conscience and lost his seat because of it.
He touched the lives of thousands of patients he treated and politicians he served with from both parties. His eulogies were delivered by former Republican Governor John Engler — a dear friend and colleague who sparred with him more than once — and current Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of the many public servants he mentored during his long career.
That’s not something you often see these days.
The Last One Standing
When Joe Schwarz entered Congress in 2004, he was already something of a relic. (He would often wryly refer to himself as a Wooly Mammoth). The physician was pro-choice in a party that had spent a generation purging those who failed purity tests from its ranks. He believed in governance, in expertise, in the kind of sober, unglamorous public service that doesn’t trend on social media because it was never designed to.
In 2006, Republicans who controlled the U.S. House put up a vote on a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, engineered as a political weapon for the midterms. Everyone told Schwarz that voting yes could help him keep his seat in a tough GOP primary.
He voted no.
He lost to Tim Walberg, a far-right preacher who has since served in Congress for nearly 20 years and become one of Trump’s most reliable foot soldiers. The contrast doesn’t need elaboration (although I’ve done so many times).