November 5, 2008, 1 a.m.
“WOW! What a nite! Obama wins! Hope u were watching! Luv ya, DAD”
In this era of texting, IM, and YouTube, everything is here, now, truncated down into its minimalist form. ¬
But here’s what I really wanted to tell my daughter Jannie, as my wife Mary and I watched President-elect Barack Obama during his victory speech at Grant Park in Chicago a few hours ago.
I could not help but reflect back to a time 40 years ago in that same Grant Park, when all was not so celebratory. The United States was in a state of turmoil as my generation was protesting against our government’s involvement in Vietnam and the discrimination of the blacks and poor in the cities and throughout the South. ¬How far we have come -- and how far we have to go!
Jannie was just 13 when our country and our sense of safety and security were violated on September 11, 2001.
That day was much the same as a week 39 years earlier. Our country was on the brink of a nuclear war, when Russia supplied nuclear missiles to Cuba, only 90 miles away from our border. Our citizens came together, prayed together, and were united in purpose. Everyone who watched television or kept up with the news will always remember where they were and what they were doing when mankind’s existence was threatened.
But for those of us who grew up during the 1960s, this sense of unity and cohesiveness would soon dissolve.
For sure, we all remembered where we were when John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. And who could forget watching Walter Cronkite on the CBS Evening News keeping us spellbound during the historic space flights of Alan Shepard, John Glenn, and Apollo XI.
What was so different about the years following my 13th birthday compared to Jannie’s teenage years, however, was the division amongst our citizens of different ages and socio-economic and racial backgrounds. Mary and I were members of the high school classes of 1968and 1969.
We had lived through the ’50s, much as Jannie had lived through the ’90s, playing baseball and tag, certain we were protected from the outside world by our families. But our innocence was shattered -- not by the fear of terrorism but by the threat of nuclear weapons. And although, much as with Iraq today, we were fighting a controversial war in Vietnam in the ’60s, there was no such respect for our soldiers as heroes.
Our memories of growing up during that decade, especially the year 1969, have taken on mystical feelings. Despite the “miracles” of Neil Armstrong’s walk on the Moon and the New York Mets’ World Series victory, the ’60s were more about who and what we left behind—in the jungles of Vietnam, in America’s inner cities, on the Moon, and in our private lives.
The ’60s transformed into the ’70s, as I went to medical school, and then in the ’80s respectability and responsibility became paramount, as I became a cardiologist and a parent. Then, in the 1990s, when I was also Mayor of Flemington, New Jersey, I stood before our Vietnam Vets and their families, during the opening Memorial Service at the “Moving Vietnam Wall.” As I nervously began to speak, I was overwhelmed by a deep-seated conflict and guilt. Although I felt I had righteously protested an immoral war, I also know that I had cowardly avoided the draft and the “killing fields,” by virtue of my student 2S deferment.
That day, even after all of those years, I was humbled standing before these heroes, who had made such a big sacrifice for our country. How could I make them understand why we had marched against the war and now, somehow, ask for their forgiveness, so I that I could honor them? Would they understand? Could Jannie understand?
Now, on this election night, as Mary and I watched Senator Obama assume the baton of national leadership after listening to Senator John McCain (former POW of the Vietnam War and hero of the Vietnam Vets) give his moving concession speech, we wondered, “Could there be healing now?”
The only thing missing on the television tonight, as we tuned out the “talking heads,” so full of their self-importance, was a voice filled with intelligence but tempered by humility. ¬We kept channel surfing, as we watched the commentators on CNN or Fox or CBS drone on, as they micro-analyzed the votes cast. ¬Who was Jannie watching in her dorm? I only fantasized that, instead of Jannie being 90 miles away at college, she was sitting with us in our living room watching Walter Cronkite the most respected voice on TV, and perhaps in the entire nation during the years Mary and I came of age.
But reality hit as I remembered that my daughter was all “grown up” now, a college junior, an eaglet spreading her wings. ¬And Mary and I are now the senior generation with no parents for us to text messages of love.
”Obama rules! Everyone says hi! Luv 2 u and Mary! Jannie”
Then the Obama girls came out onto the platform with their mom to join their dad. Martin Luther King’s words, spoken back in August 1963, had come true: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
The Obama girls’ beaming faces reminded me of our days when I took off my cardiologist hat and, as mayor, walked down Main Street during the Memorial Day parades, with Jannie at my side as the “Little Mayor,” smiling and waving at the crowds.
I remembered back to another night over seven years ago, before 9/11, when Jannie was still innocent and I discovered that, as Ricky Ricardo would so often say to Lucy, “You’ve got some ‘splaining to do.”
That was June 8, 2001.
“From the Prologue”
