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AMC's Jack Scalia's Pre- 9/11 Words of Wisdom

ALL MY CHILDREN’s Jack Scalia (ex-Chris Stamp) had some eerily prophetic things to say when he had a breakfast interview with SOAP OPERA WEEKLY exactly one week before Sept 11, 2001.”There’s a greatness in this country many of the kids today don’t know. All they know is Star Wars and video games and what they see on CD-ROMS. There hasn’t been a real national crisis or tragedy or great adversity in their generation for them to understand and appreciate what it was like, for example, when the day JFK was shot. Or when Pearl Harbor was hit. But I remember exactly where I was when I was sitting in front of the television when those ships from Russia were headed to Cuba. I remember fear and I remember the potential of nuclear war. My great-grandfather was a police captain, and so was my grandfather. And then my dad spent 23 years as a cop in the Housing Authority. Two of my uncles were at Normandy. And my Uncle Vince and Uncle Frank, and my Uncle Bob were at Pearl Harbor. My family has served the country in almost every major war since the Civil War. I was raised with those principals and values and ethics that came out of the men and women that served. But this generation doesn’t quite know; they haven’t been tested.There’s been a lot of moral decay on many, many levels. But this country is a great country and will always rebound. It’s just our nature, part of our makeup and who we are, our personalities. And even Admiral Yamamoto said after the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, they said, ‘Do you think have we won?’ and he said, ‘I fear we have awakened the sleeping giant.’ He knew. Never was there a mobilization as there was at that time. But I think that when you don’t have adversity then you don’t have something that’s going to test the mettle, something that’s going to hone the sword and fire the furnace. That’s why it’s so important to take care of the foundation of this country. The military, the police, our civil servants — and our fire department. Our firefighters are our last line of defense, baby. So you take care of the teachers, the civil servants, the soldiers, the cops, the firemen. You gotta take care of the people that are part of the foundation. If you don’t, it crumbles. Because if you have a strong foundation like we have, then you can build or rebuild anything on it. But if you’ve got a weak foundation you can’t build anything.”

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