Inauguration day for Barack Obama is upon us. It is obviously a momentous occasion… the first black man elected as president of the United States. But as I contemplate this, it also makes me look back at other momentous occasions in my lifetime. So before I comment on this inauguration, I’ve asked myself… just how do the other occasions stack up.
I think my first memory of a big event was the launching of Sputnik by the Russians in October of 1957. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sputnik_1) I only have very vague memories of that… some kind of hoopla on TV and in the news. I was only 8 years old, so I really have no specific memories… just that it was some kind of big deal at the time. And indeed it turned out to be a big deal. It started the space race and look where that has taken us in only a tad more than 50 years.
The first election I remember was John Kennedy. I remember bits and pieces of the campaign. Mostly, I remember that I was for him. I didn’t know enough about the politics of the time to have a good reason for being for him… but he was charismatic… and that was good enough for me. I suspect that charisma has taken Obama a long ways.
I remember John Kennedy’s inauguration… at least I think I do. Certainly I will never forget his
“Ask not what your country can do for you… ask what you can do for your country.”
Now the truth is, I’m not sure if I really remember his speech directly (“Mad Cow” setting in – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denny_Crane )… or if it has just become part of my generations collective memory.
John Kennedy… err President Kennedy is also central to the next two momentous occasions I remember. First was the Cuban Missile Chrisis. I was still too young to truly understand the implications of this… but I knew from my parents response that it was bad. We almost went to war with the Soviet Union which would have almost certainly resulted in thermo-nuclear war. I remember that everyone was so scared that after it was over a lot of people started building bomb (fall-out) shelters in their back yards. I had a girl friend who’s parents built a fall-out shelter. My parents decided not to build one because we lived to close to a strategic target… we wouldn’t survive the initial nukes.
The other John Kennedy event? November 22, 1963… He was assassinated. The day is absolutely vivid in my memory and will never fade. Even “Mad Cow” won’t make that fade. It was the “day the music died”. (The details of this are in my memoirs – Work in progress).
No mater what you may think about John Kennedy… good or bad… the impact of his presidency continued for a long time. To some greater or lesser extent his impact is still felt. He got us started down the path to the Viet Nam War and on the path to Space and the Moon.
“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returing him safely to earth”
John F Kennedy; Delivered in person before congress, May 25, 1961
… In Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, we must communicate our determination and support to those upon whom our hopes for resisting the communist tide in that continent ultimately depend.
John F Kennedy, Same speech, May 25, 1961
Click here for link to whole speech Kennedy gave
I recall vividly watching TV on July 20, 1969. I was in a little garden spot called Nakon Phanom. There were only two TVs there so every one was crowed around to watch… it was a little black & white TV. John Glen stepped of the ladder… I could barely tell what had happened… and said,
“That’s one small step for man… one giant leap for mankind”.
As I reflect back now, I realize that I was living what John Kennedy had set in motion… watching astranouts on the moon while I was involved in fighting the Viet Nam war. Ok… Nakhon Phanom was a US airbase in Thailand, but we were dropping bombs on people just the same.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakhon_Phanom_Royal_Thai_Air_Force_Base ) (http://aircommandoman.tripod.com/)
(Memories of Naked Fanny – Work in progress)
Other significant events? Over the next three decades, I can’t think of any that stand out in my memory as much as these. Of course, there was Watergate that played out over a couple of years culminating in Nixon’s resignation. And there’s our retreat from Viet Nam in ’75. But neither of these stand out as individual events… rather they were a culmination of predictable outcomes of earlier events.
I remember telling my family… especially my son to watch for history being made by Mark McGwire in 1998. Mark McGwire was about to break one of baseball’s longest standing and most famous record(s)… Babe Ruth’s and Roger Maris’ home run records. I watched him hit 60, then 61, then 62… ultimately hitting 70. Then, just three years later, I boo’ed Barry Bonds because I believed that his home run record was achieved with steroids… he was cheating. Since then I’ve come to believe that Mark McGwire’s records were through steroid use too. So much for a momentous event, or history making… it was a testament to the drug manufacturers… not to McGwire or Bonds. So this all turned out to be a non-event.
Perhaps during the last four decades I didn’t pay much attention to the “events of the day”. Rather I paid attention to myself… to my family. Of course my kids being born were momentous to me. I worked hard on completing my education which was a big deal to me. Personal computers… cell phones… the internet… all big deals, but even though they are so dominate in our lives, I can’t relate them to big events.
So that brings us back to today. Barack Obama is to become the 44th President of the United States. To tell you the truth, during the campaign last year I didn’t think it would happen. I didn’t think this country was… is… ready for an “African American” to become president. (I put African American in quotes for a reason I’ll get to in a minute.)
I remember a great deal of the civil rights movement of the 60’s. People were spit on, beat up, and heads were bashed in. Crosses were burned and people were murdered. It’s just not that long ago. I remember the Watts Riots, and more recently the Rodney King Riots (1992). So it is to my amazement that we have come so far in so few years.
A couple of paragraphs ago I put African American in quotes. I did that because I think the reason that Barack Obama was able to win the election is because Americans don’t see him as “African American”. Rather, he is only seen as American. We don’t see him as “black”… we don’t make the connection of black vs white… we don’t see him as anything but an American. He is one of us… black, white, native American, chicano (or whatever the PC term is)… he is seen by the majority of Americans as “one of us”.
For me, the day brings a “changing of the guard”. So, if for no other reason, that is momentous to me. The “boomers” out and the next generation in. We’ve had sixteen years of the “Boomers”… eight that were pretty good, and eight that were not so good. (Even the “not so good” have been good for me personally.) Despite all of our feeling that we could change the world… despite our feeling that we would make a difference… and despite our lofty thoughts, I think the “Boomers” about broke even.
So will the day go down in history as a momentous day? Well… I guess by definition, it has to be. After all, Barack Obama will become the first black president. That, in and of itself, must be momentous. But I think “race” will soon be forgotten (as it should be). The day will be only a beginning and how the day will be viewed by history will depend only on Obama himself. Will he be great? It’s up to him.