April 7, 2008

Contemplating the '60's.

Forty years ago Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on a
motel balcony in Memphis, in that long ago period known as "the
60's," a time when the world seemed pregnant with hope. It was
also a time when hope was offset by a vicious spirit that walked
the land, murdering young people who went south to register
voters.

It was the vicious that killed John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther
King, and Robert Kennedy. It seemed that whenever some one person
reached out and called the best from us and to whose words we
responded, they were, literally, shot down.

We now know all these men were flawed; they had their foibles and
vices. They also called out to us to be better than we were, to
give more, to do more, to love more and to reach for what might
seem unattainable - like reaching the moon, eradicating racial
inequality, erasing poverty. Their words resonate down the
valleys of time and will be part of the history of this country.

In the intervening years there has not been another trio of men
like those three; there hasn't been even one single individual who
spoke or inspired as these men did. Nor have any men or women
come along who have caused in their wake the kind of social
changes these men did.

The Peace Corps was formed by JFK and legions of young Americans
went out to do good. In medical school my brother enlisted in the
Air Force, to enter when he left his internship. He got a year's
grace and went to Honduras and ran a clinic for children, taking
along his wife and daughter. A Christmas visit to him changed the
way I looked at the world forever.

We reached for the moon and achieved it, driven by the words of
John Kennedy, by the spirit he left behind after his
assassination; he left a country with many citizens who wanted to
live up to what he showed us we might be.

In the intervening years, it has sometimes seemed we have lost our
way, become indolent, expecting ease as our right, with no sense
of the common good.

It's not all true.

That came to me Sunday afternoon when I was able to reach Kevin
Malone, who thinks of me as his uncle. He is in Zambia, being
rather unsuccessful in agriculture and being very successful in
people projects. People are his specialty; he evokes in others
the sense of joy he has in his own life. We spoke for twenty five
minutes, mobile to mobile, a feat possible in part to advances
from the space program. I said good-bye only because I suddenly
felt that I would cry - I am very proud of what he is doing and
who he is and who he is becoming. He and others are still out
there in the far reaches of the earth, doing good. Many Americans
don't even realize there is still a Peace Corps nor that it has
more applicants than it can accommodate.

My brother, some years ago, took to returning with medical teams
to Honduras. Often the two weeks they are on site is all the
medical care that the people get all year.

The most palpable help New Orleans received after Katrina came not
from the government but from individuals. And friends go again
and again to keep setting right the devastation nature and
government bungling caused.

The spirit of the three men assassinated in the '60's lives on in
Kevin's actions, my brother's journeys, the work of the Katrina
volunteers. This is the America so few, even at home, see.

That a black man and a white woman - no matter what you think of
them - are vying for the Democratic nomination for President is a
statement of the changes begun in the '60's and now beginning to
play out in the political and economic landscape. A wind of hope
is blowing across the land, a wind that is like a Santa Ana in
California, warm and invigorating, fraught with danger.