from
Living in the Time of Heroes: A Blog
And
That's the Way it is
Uncle Walter
is dead. He died last week at 92, just short of the 40th
anniversary of the original moon walk by my namesake Neil
Armstrong. I remember watching that momentous event with
my friend, Karen Lang, in ‘69. I had just graduated from
High School and was wondering what life had in store for
me. I was waiting for my draft board to decide my fate and
there wasn’t room for much hope or optimism, aside from
being in love (and even that was fraught with trouble, as
I had discovered the month before when my “girlfriend” had
dumped me for a college boy…). But that day, for one brief
afternoon, there was a break in the storm, a moment in
history and I was there along with everyone else who tuned
in.
Walter Kronkite, one of the best father figures this
country has ever had, was there, too, guiding us through
that momentous occasion. He was on the edge of his seat,
just like the rest of us, waiting for that one moment,
that one heart-stopping, joy producing moment when it all
would make sense even if only for a short time. When it
came, he heaved a sigh of relief and wiped away a few
tears of pride, just like the rest of us, knowing that
America still had it.
It was hard, in those days to see that America was a great
country. There was so much hatred and conflict and
suspicion going ’round. Even in my high school, ‘69 was a
hard year for me. There were issues that we, as students,
tried to address, both within the school setting and
without. School politics seemed so important back then,
but I can’t really remember what all the hubbub was about
today, 40 years later. It must have had something to do
with the intersection of the Vietnam War and our protests
of it. And there was a dress code that seemed to be
ridiculous back then, though it pales in comparison to the
Draconian measures taken nowadays…uniforms? In high
school? WTF?
Everything seemed much more dramatic back then. Perhaps it
was because our lives were more quiet and uninteresting.
The use of drugs and alcohol weren’t widespread among my
peers, though there was a marked increase of
experimentation with weed and acid among certain of my
friends. After I graduated from H.S. a number of low-lifes
O.Ded as drug use really began to rise, but it was still
an exception rather than the rule. And sex was still
something that “bad” people did, so teen-pregnancy was
almost unheard of (more I think because it was kept
hush-hush, than anything else). STD’s were something that
impure people got (our students were all “pure”). Don’t
get me wrong, it wasn’t a Quaker school…we were all, for
the most part, horny as hell. We just didn’t know how to
deal with it, yet. We learned later on, oh how we learned!
I remember watching the CBS Evening News with Uncle Walter
during that time; watching as our world expanded from
sleepiness to awakening. Conventions, riots,
assassinations, Viet Nam, strikes, protests, scandals,
moon landings, the space race, political shenanigans, the
works…Walter K. was there to draw attention to it. And
with such class, even back then, he was an elder statesman
for the news. Walter had been around for a long, long
time…longer in fact than I could imagine, I mean, he was
52 in 1969, for chrissake! I have a hard time dealing with
the fact that I’m 58 now!
Walter was cool. He stated what was going on
matter-of-factly, but he wasn’t without emotion, he wasn’t
a robot. He was moved by things, which allowed us to be
moved as well. I remember him losing it at the Democratic
Convention in ‘68 when the Police were beating the snot
out of the protesters outside the convention hall. Up to
that point a lot of us had thought we were just pissing
into the wind and having little or no effect on the status
quo/ business as usual crowd. But Walter let it be known
that enough was enough. It was at that point that he
became a hero in my book. Not because he went into a
burning building or jumped on a grenade or took a bullet
to protect someone, but because he raised his voice in
protest, adding it to all the other voices. And when
Walter spoke, a lot of people listened.
Sure he could have sat there reporting the news
impassionately, but he chose to react, and he had enough
clout that CBS didn’t censor him.
But now, Walter is gone. Who are we going to turn to for
answers now?
Link to blog:
Living in the Time of Heroes by RD Armstong
Free Verse
The Lover’s
Moon
For Breindie
This is a night for
dreamers
Reason has drifted away
On a light breeze
Somewhere a lover’s moon
Hovers in the night sky
And hearts race as one.
