Jean Bethke was born on Jan. 6, 1941, in Timnath, Colo. (population 185), a farming town north of Denver. She was the oldest of five children of Paul and Helen Bethke, descendants of German immigrants from Russia, and grew up in nearby Fort Collins, Colo., where her father, a schoolteacher, principal and later school superintendent, had moved the family.
When Jean contracted polio, she and her mother moved to Denver for treatment. Her mother worked at the hospital to be nearby and helped Jean get back on her feet despite a prognosis that she would never walk again….
Dr. Elshtain said she took on [the task of her book “Just War Against Terror: The Burden of American Power in a Violent World”] for both intellectual and personal reasons. She wrote the book, she said, “because I have been provoked by much of what has been written and said about terrorism and our response to it; because September 11, 2001, reminded me of what it means to be an American citizen; because I come from a small people, Volga Germans, who would have been murdered or exiled had they remained in Russia rather than making the wrenching journey to America.”