9/27/30 - 9/27/10
Dear Curt,
It was great to see you at your mother’s memorial service. I believe the last time I saw you was at John’s memorial service. We really need to stop meeting like this.
I wanted to say a few words about your mother, but the stairs at the service made me fearful of falling. As you may know, I was hospitalized four years ago with meningitis. After three weeks in a coma, I woke up with 100 percent hearing loss and 100 percent loss of balance function in both ears.
George Ann was already Annette’s friend when Annette and I met 35 or so years ago. On two separate occasions George Ann was my landlady. Annette rented the house on Michael Street from Ethel Lilley Realty through George Ann, and then several years later we rented the house George Ann owned on Princeton Way. Then George Ann sold me my first home. I paid $41,000 in about 1983 or 1984 for a house down the street from Agnes Scott College in Decatur. Two bedrooms, dining room, den, finished attic. I sold that house three years later for $65,000, the first money I ever made in real estate but not the last. Over the years I bought and sold a half dozen or more properties, both primary residences and rental properties. Each sale was profitable, plus the rental income produced.
I am sure that some poet has said something about a dear friend being treasured more than gold. Anybody can be that kind of friend. But George Ann also showed me the way to make a little cash on the side, something everyone needs, maybe for a retirement fund, or something for the grandchildren when they go off to college.
Showing posts with label Memoriam. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Memoriam. Show all posts
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Neighbors and Heroes
Pine Lake kids of all ages know the house on Lakeshore Dr., across the street from the gazebo, with the most extraordinary display of lights and decorations, yard art, life-size figures, blow-ups, and cut-outs every Christmas, Easter, and Halloween. Paul and Dorothy Gumz were not shy. They celebrated generously for everyone’s viewing enjoyment. The work involved in putting out these displays, not to mention storage and keeping up with it all, was enormous.
Paul Arthur Gumz, Jr., age 86, of Pine Lake, died Saturday December 20, 2008.
A native of Chicago, Mr Gumz retired in 1992 from the U.S. Postal Service, where he had worked for 37 years. He was also a WWII veteran of service in the U.S. Army. He was a dedicated Atlanta Braves baseball fan. He loved trains and especially his family.
He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Dorothy Wilkinson Gumz of Pine Lake, children, Richard Gumz of Social Circle, Terry Gumz of Rowell, Reece Gumz of Commerce, Sherry Garmon of Logaville, Debra Young of Monroe, and Vincent Gumz of Box Springs, a brother Bernard Gumz of St Petersburg, Fl., and sister Dorothy Perry of Chicago, Il., and 14 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.
Pine Lake friend and neighbor Paul Jasionowski writes, “I am very sad that one of my heroes passed away on December 20, 2008. Paul Gumz, of Pine Lake, GA, was a World War II veteran who served with the 56th Medical Battalion of the U.S. 7th Army. They were the first battalion to liberate the Dachau Concentration Camp on April 29, 1945. I interviewed him in 2005 for an article which was published in Plaintalk. He had a portfolio of pictures that he took during the liberation. I asked him why he took pictures; he replied, “No one would have ever believed me.” His portfolio is on display at the Jewish Studies Center at Emory University and the Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp Museum.”
“I considered him a friend who shared with me a firsthand testament of war and man’s inhumanity toward man, which was a haunting reminder to him for most of his life and should be a reminder for all of us as well. It is my hope that a Grateful Nation will acknowledge him and remember him for the freedoms that he, and others like him have fought to give us.”
"He will be greatly missed.”
Paul Jasionowski published his interview with Mr. Gumz in 2005 in the Pine Lake PLAINTALK. Click here to enjoy this tribute.
Paul Arthur Gumz, Jr., age 86, of Pine Lake, died Saturday December 20, 2008.
A native of Chicago, Mr Gumz retired in 1992 from the U.S. Postal Service, where he had worked for 37 years. He was also a WWII veteran of service in the U.S. Army. He was a dedicated Atlanta Braves baseball fan. He loved trains and especially his family.
He is survived by his wife of 56 years, Dorothy Wilkinson Gumz of Pine Lake, children, Richard Gumz of Social Circle, Terry Gumz of Rowell, Reece Gumz of Commerce, Sherry Garmon of Logaville, Debra Young of Monroe, and Vincent Gumz of Box Springs, a brother Bernard Gumz of St Petersburg, Fl., and sister Dorothy Perry of Chicago, Il., and 14 grandchildren and 12 great grandchildren.
Pine Lake friend and neighbor Paul Jasionowski writes, “I am very sad that one of my heroes passed away on December 20, 2008. Paul Gumz, of Pine Lake, GA, was a World War II veteran who served with the 56th Medical Battalion of the U.S. 7th Army. They were the first battalion to liberate the Dachau Concentration Camp on April 29, 1945. I interviewed him in 2005 for an article which was published in Plaintalk. He had a portfolio of pictures that he took during the liberation. I asked him why he took pictures; he replied, “No one would have ever believed me.” His portfolio is on display at the Jewish Studies Center at Emory University and the Andersonville Prisoner of War Camp Museum.”
“I considered him a friend who shared with me a firsthand testament of war and man’s inhumanity toward man, which was a haunting reminder to him for most of his life and should be a reminder for all of us as well. It is my hope that a Grateful Nation will acknowledge him and remember him for the freedoms that he, and others like him have fought to give us.”
"He will be greatly missed.”
Paul Jasionowski published his interview with Mr. Gumz in 2005 in the Pine Lake PLAINTALK. Click here to enjoy this tribute.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Billy Shoolbred 3/1/43 - 12/9/07
Photo Courtesy of Ralph McConigly. Used by Permission.
Billy Shoolbred and I used to strike out early on a Saturday morning, meeting somewhere in the neighborhood between where he lived on Juniper, between 10th and 8th, and I lived on 14th Street to ride our bikes down the center line of Peachtree Street to the Paramount Theatre, across the street from the intersection of Forsyth St, Carnegie Way, and Peachtree. We leaned the bicycles against the side of the building, no bike racks, no locks. We spent the day inside watching adventure serials, cartoons, and double-feature Tarzan movies and westerns. The price of admission was a dime. When we left the movie in the late afternoon, we climbed back on our bikes and rode home down the center of Peachtree St. The year was sometime during the second quarter of the Presidency of Dwight Eisenhower.
Billy was the first friend I made when I started the fifth grade as the new kid at Clark Howell Elementary School, which once existed on 10th Street, between Juniper and Piedmont. For the remainder of my elementary school years, whatever I did, Shoolbred was at my side. His mother worked for her cousin, Mary Mobley, who owned a picture framing business and adjacent real estate on Peachtree, including a large and rambling apartment building with a courtyard in the back, the site of countless cookouts at which I was a regular guest, almost a member of the family. The first baseball glove I ever owned was a hand-me-down from Shoolbred, as were all the part-time and after-school jobs of my teenage years, working for Mary Mobley’s fellow members of the Tenth Street Business Association. When Billy turned 16, he became the owner of the 1949 Pontiac station wagon that had been the delivery vehicle for Mobley Frame Shop. He and I spent an afternoon painting over the business logo on the front doors. I learned to drive in that station wagon, well known at Henry Grady High School as “The Jungle Cruiser,” after an indestructible tank featured in an adventure movie serial called Tim Tyler’s Luck. I attended countless high school football games, proms, and other social events double-dating in Shoolbred’s “Jungle Cruiser.”
When we graduated from high school, neither of us any longer going by the name of “Billy,” except within our own families, Bill Shoolbred did what young folks often have the internal imperative to do; he re-invented himself. He joined the U.S. Coast Guard, although I have no knowledge that he had ever been on a boat before doing so. He navigated a successful career for himself in the Coast Guard and retired as a Chief Warrant Officer. The last time I saw Bill Shoolbred, he came to my house for a farewell party in 1976, before I went to Egypt to work for the American Embassy in Cairo.
Last week, Ralph McConigly, another grade-school friend, contacted me on behalf of our high school graduating class, planning its 50th reunion, scheduled in four years. Ralph had located me through my blog. This is the second time this year I have been hunted down on the internet. Ralph reported that Bill Shoolbred had died almost a year ago. I am not surprised to learn that people my age die. I came very close to doing it myself in 2006. What I mind is the thought that my old friends might die without my knowing it. Vanish without a trace. As if somehow I need to salute and honor them and whatever our lives meant. In my heart, and if possible, in writing, which is one of the ways I get to my heart.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Noel Petrin, 10/29/32 - 9/14/05
Thirty years ago, I worked for the U.S. Department of State and served in assignments at the American Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels, Belgium, and at the State Department in Washington, D.C. My job was in telecommunications operations, not diplomacy. Among other things, I was a teletype operator until that equipment was replaced by computers. I operated, installed and repaired telephone equipment, radios and other communications equipment. I am still a big fan of spy novels, and when they mention “code clerks,” I actually know what one does, because I was one. This is the same kind of work Julia Childs did at the American Embassy in Paris, while she spent her off-duty hours learning about French cooking.
In Cairo, I had a friend and co-worker named Noel Petrin. Noel had already retired from a successful career as a senior Non-Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Noel was nothing like the cartoon image of a big, tough Marine Sgt. He was soft-spoken and intelligent. He and his family were also neighbors of my family, and we cooked dinners for one another and shared more than a few beers and cups of coffee. American Embassy workers are a close-knit group, strangers in strange lands together. When I was scheduled to leave Cairo, the Deputy Chief of Mission had a farewell party at which I and a couple of others were guests of honor. He asked if there was anybody special he should be sure to invite. I gave him the names of Noel Petrin and his wife Ardith.
Noel stayed in the Foreign Service long enough to retire again, after serving also in Tokyo, Geneva, and even back to Egypt, in the coastal city of Alexandria. Over the years, I lost touch with all my contacts in the State Department, not counting the ones who occasionally turn up in news reports about international affairs and security. But this year, Noel’s daughter, Sarah, in a stunning bit of internet detective work, located me via my blog and asked if I had known her family in Cairo 30 years ago. She has become a loyal reader and sometimes leaves comments signed “Sarah in Switzerland.” Here is the e-mail I received from her today:
Today is the 3 year anniversary of my Dad’s passing.
As you were so kind to pray for his soul when he passed, I ask if you would say a prayer for his soul today.
He is deeply loved and still so very much missed.
Thank you for thinking of him.
With love,
Sarah.
I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun . . .
I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening . . . .
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal . . . .
The rose, and the nightingale drunk with its fragrance.
I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation,
the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not . . .
I am the soul in all.
- Rumi
In Cairo, I had a friend and co-worker named Noel Petrin. Noel had already retired from a successful career as a senior Non-Commissioned Officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. Noel was nothing like the cartoon image of a big, tough Marine Sgt. He was soft-spoken and intelligent. He and his family were also neighbors of my family, and we cooked dinners for one another and shared more than a few beers and cups of coffee. American Embassy workers are a close-knit group, strangers in strange lands together. When I was scheduled to leave Cairo, the Deputy Chief of Mission had a farewell party at which I and a couple of others were guests of honor. He asked if there was anybody special he should be sure to invite. I gave him the names of Noel Petrin and his wife Ardith.
Noel stayed in the Foreign Service long enough to retire again, after serving also in Tokyo, Geneva, and even back to Egypt, in the coastal city of Alexandria. Over the years, I lost touch with all my contacts in the State Department, not counting the ones who occasionally turn up in news reports about international affairs and security. But this year, Noel’s daughter, Sarah, in a stunning bit of internet detective work, located me via my blog and asked if I had known her family in Cairo 30 years ago. She has become a loyal reader and sometimes leaves comments signed “Sarah in Switzerland.” Here is the e-mail I received from her today:
Today is the 3 year anniversary of my Dad’s passing.
As you were so kind to pray for his soul when he passed, I ask if you would say a prayer for his soul today.
He is deeply loved and still so very much missed.
Thank you for thinking of him.
With love,
Sarah.
I am the dust in the sunlight, I am the ball of the sun . . .
I am the mist of morning, the breath of evening . . . .
I am the spark in the stone, the gleam of gold in the metal . . . .
The rose, and the nightingale drunk with its fragrance.
I am the chain of being, the circle of the spheres,
The scale of creation,
the rise and the fall.
I am what is and is not . . .
I am the soul in all.
- Rumi
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Rhymes with Burden
When famous names lead the obituary columns, they do not require my notice to rest in peace. However, I need to find a little closure for myself at the death of Hamilton Jordan. He and I were born the same year. Jordan grew up in the Georgia town of Albany, pronounced by the locals in such a way that would never mistake it for the capital of the state of New York.
Hamilton Jordan graduated from UGA, majoring in political science. He landed a job with the gubernatorial campaign of Jimmy Carter, worked as an aide of the Governor's, and eventually presented an 80 page magnum opus detailing how the Georgia Governor could become President, complete with a reading list and names of people to get to know. After engineering Carter’s election as President, Jordan became White House chief of staff and played key roles behind the scenes in foreign affairs, including the successful Panama Canal Treaty and the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, as well as the disastrous Iran Hostage Crisis.
The national press portrayed Hamilton Jordan to be something of a smart-ass and a character from Animal House, snorting cocaine at a New York night club, glaring down the cleavage of the Egyptian Ambassador’s wife and announcing his admiration for the Great Pyramids, and wandering the White House wearing blue jeans. Legal investigation of the cocaine charges came to nothing, and the Egyptian Ambassador’s wife denied the other report.
Hamilton Jordan taught the Washington press corps to say his name in the old southern style. When Jordan was first hospitalized with cancer, he said he turned on the television only to see a picture of himself and hear, “CBS News has just learned that former presidential aide Hamilton Jordan is in Emory Hospital and has been diagnosed as having inoperable lung cancer." Jordan asked, “If my doctor doesn't know what I have, how in the hell can CBS News know? This stimulates me to consider having a different medical team. Dr. Lesley Stahl of CBS could make the tough diagnosis. Cool and calm Sam Donaldson of ABC could perform the delicate biopsy. Godfrey "Budge" Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor (who has put me to sleep a couple of times before) could be my anesthesiologist. And columnist Robert Novak could administer the harsh chemotherapy.”
For more than two decades, Hamilton Jordan fought cancer, which he believed resulted from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, where he had served as a volunteer with an international refugee agency, despite his 4-F draft classification. In his book, “No Such Thing as a Bad Day,” he urges cancer patients to take charge of their own treatment. "I don't ever want to forget the raw fear of death. Today I lead a life I don't take for granted," he said to the Atlanta Constitution. Jordan and his wife Dorothy, a former pediatric oncology nurse, founded Camp Sunshine Retreat, in Morgan County, Georgia, for children with cancer, and later opened Camp Kudzu for children with juvenile diabetes.
Jordan told the Atlanta Press Club earlier this year that he admired the campaign of Barack Obama. He suggested President Obama should appoint New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as domestic policy czar or Secretary of Treasury, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn as Secretary of State. I believe that leaves Hamilton Jordan’s reputation as a master political strategist intact.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
Hamilton Jordan graduated from UGA, majoring in political science. He landed a job with the gubernatorial campaign of Jimmy Carter, worked as an aide of the Governor's, and eventually presented an 80 page magnum opus detailing how the Georgia Governor could become President, complete with a reading list and names of people to get to know. After engineering Carter’s election as President, Jordan became White House chief of staff and played key roles behind the scenes in foreign affairs, including the successful Panama Canal Treaty and the Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, as well as the disastrous Iran Hostage Crisis.
The national press portrayed Hamilton Jordan to be something of a smart-ass and a character from Animal House, snorting cocaine at a New York night club, glaring down the cleavage of the Egyptian Ambassador’s wife and announcing his admiration for the Great Pyramids, and wandering the White House wearing blue jeans. Legal investigation of the cocaine charges came to nothing, and the Egyptian Ambassador’s wife denied the other report.
Hamilton Jordan taught the Washington press corps to say his name in the old southern style. When Jordan was first hospitalized with cancer, he said he turned on the television only to see a picture of himself and hear, “CBS News has just learned that former presidential aide Hamilton Jordan is in Emory Hospital and has been diagnosed as having inoperable lung cancer." Jordan asked, “If my doctor doesn't know what I have, how in the hell can CBS News know? This stimulates me to consider having a different medical team. Dr. Lesley Stahl of CBS could make the tough diagnosis. Cool and calm Sam Donaldson of ABC could perform the delicate biopsy. Godfrey "Budge" Sperling of the Christian Science Monitor (who has put me to sleep a couple of times before) could be my anesthesiologist. And columnist Robert Novak could administer the harsh chemotherapy.”
For more than two decades, Hamilton Jordan fought cancer, which he believed resulted from exposure to Agent Orange in Vietnam, where he had served as a volunteer with an international refugee agency, despite his 4-F draft classification. In his book, “No Such Thing as a Bad Day,” he urges cancer patients to take charge of their own treatment. "I don't ever want to forget the raw fear of death. Today I lead a life I don't take for granted," he said to the Atlanta Constitution. Jordan and his wife Dorothy, a former pediatric oncology nurse, founded Camp Sunshine Retreat, in Morgan County, Georgia, for children with cancer, and later opened Camp Kudzu for children with juvenile diabetes.
Jordan told the Atlanta Press Club earlier this year that he admired the campaign of Barack Obama. He suggested President Obama should appoint New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg as domestic policy czar or Secretary of Treasury, Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel as Secretary of Defense, and former Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn as Secretary of State. I believe that leaves Hamilton Jordan’s reputation as a master political strategist intact.
Copyright 2008 by William C. Cotter
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Born March 23, 1964
Remembering John Hall
Happy Birthday, dear John. Happy Birthday, dear John.
Happy Birthday, dear charging for the precipice at Normandie.
Happy Birthday, dear motorbiking over the Maadi manhole covers.
Happy Birthday, dear picking me up off the floor when I was choking
on my food and jerking the breath back into me.
Happy Birthday, dear deer hunter and American frontiersman reincarnate.
Happy Birthday, dear bringer of Shannon Hall into this world.
Happy Birthday, dear son and brother and father and enricher of life.
Happy Birthday to you.
--Bill
YOU'RE
SO DUMB
YOUR HAIR HURTS
my brother
is perched
at the brink of
a
fluffy
white cloud--
here,
he wears a white sheet
wrapped around
like a cloak
like a choir-robe
like to cover old sofas
he’s surrounded by friends—
they wear white sheets, also
boys who died
far too young—
boys who rushed from great cliffs
boys who dropped from tall trees
boys accordion-ing motorbikes
bright lime green--
against blank white walls
boys who DIED
from the
ex-hiliration
from the speed, heights and impact
up above me, now
laughing
lifting up his robed arms,
he proclaims
YOU’RE SO DUMB
THAT YOUR HAIR
HURTS
just
like
he
always
did
a small
yellow - haired thing
very small in this grass
YOU’RE SO DUMB
( i'm so wordless )
oh, my brother
we all had so much
sadness
now we’re all just
so happy
but my hair, it still hurts me
all
of the time
--Heidi
Happy Birthday, dear John. Happy Birthday, dear John.
Happy Birthday, dear charging for the precipice at Normandie.
Happy Birthday, dear motorbiking over the Maadi manhole covers.
Happy Birthday, dear picking me up off the floor when I was choking
on my food and jerking the breath back into me.
Happy Birthday, dear deer hunter and American frontiersman reincarnate.
Happy Birthday, dear bringer of Shannon Hall into this world.
Happy Birthday, dear son and brother and father and enricher of life.
Happy Birthday to you.
--Bill
YOU'RE
SO DUMB
YOUR HAIR HURTS
my brother
is perched
at the brink of
a
fluffy
white cloud--
here,
he wears a white sheet
wrapped around
like a cloak
like a choir-robe
like to cover old sofas
he’s surrounded by friends—
they wear white sheets, also
boys who died
far too young—
boys who rushed from great cliffs
boys who dropped from tall trees
boys accordion-ing motorbikes
bright lime green--
against blank white walls
boys who DIED
from the
ex-hiliration
from the speed, heights and impact
up above me, now
laughing
lifting up his robed arms,
he proclaims
YOU’RE SO DUMB
THAT YOUR HAIR
HURTS
just
like
he
always
did
a small
yellow - haired thing
very small in this grass
YOU’RE SO DUMB
( i'm so wordless )
oh, my brother
we all had so much
sadness
now we’re all just
so happy
but my hair, it still hurts me
all
of the time
--Heidi
Friday, December 28, 2007
Sister Oui
My sister Ouida died at Christmastime. She was 73. She had been in an Atlanta area hospital for weeks, and a surgical procedure failed to rid her body of pain and poison.
The funeral home asked me, “Was she married?”
“Several times,” I told them.
“Divorced?”
“Several times.”
The first time Ouida married, she was 16 and ran away from home. She quit high school. It is a great advantage in life to have a big sister who can show you things not to do. Ouida was always a grown person to me. In my earliest memories, she is already a teenager. I did not know sister from shinola; she was one of my mommies. She was born Ouida Faye, a beautiful Southern double-name. My Daddy was the only one who called her Ouida Faye all his days; he did not abandon Southernisms lightly. “Ouida” is pronounced like the French “oui.” All of her little nieces and nephews, as they came along, called her “Aunt We.” Ouida had two beloved daughters, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Ouida was among those of us who smoked more than one pack of cigarettes a day for many too many years. She became a lung-cancer survivor. During her recent hospitalization, I talked to her about how I had been prepared in my mind several years ago for her death. But she was a tough old bird. I said to her, “At this point, I believe you may live to be 90, like Mother.”
Ouida said, “I’m sure as hell gonna try.”
For a while, it looked like Ouida would once again be discharged from the hospital and sent home. I observed one of her physical therapy sessions, a not very successful effort to stand her up from her hospital bed. “She’s lazy,” the doctor declared to me. Ouida died less than two weeks later. Madame Physician, first, do no harm. Bitch.
Ouida and I talked about plans for her to move to Florida to be near her daughters. She liked to talk about the future. She liked for me to hold her hand and rub her arm. I read her the blog I wrote about our eccentric mother. Ouida laughed till the tears rolled down her face. In her final few days, we communicated less well, between my deafness and her struggle to say anything at all. The last thing she said to me, and not for the first time, was, “I love you.” Not, “I’m in pain.” Not, “my life is over.” Not, “It’s time for me to lay this burden down.” But, “I love you.” The sweet taste of those words on her tongue and that thought in her mind and that feeling in her heart.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
The funeral home asked me, “Was she married?”
“Several times,” I told them.
“Divorced?”
“Several times.”
The first time Ouida married, she was 16 and ran away from home. She quit high school. It is a great advantage in life to have a big sister who can show you things not to do. Ouida was always a grown person to me. In my earliest memories, she is already a teenager. I did not know sister from shinola; she was one of my mommies. She was born Ouida Faye, a beautiful Southern double-name. My Daddy was the only one who called her Ouida Faye all his days; he did not abandon Southernisms lightly. “Ouida” is pronounced like the French “oui.” All of her little nieces and nephews, as they came along, called her “Aunt We.” Ouida had two beloved daughters, as well as grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Ouida was among those of us who smoked more than one pack of cigarettes a day for many too many years. She became a lung-cancer survivor. During her recent hospitalization, I talked to her about how I had been prepared in my mind several years ago for her death. But she was a tough old bird. I said to her, “At this point, I believe you may live to be 90, like Mother.”
Ouida said, “I’m sure as hell gonna try.”
For a while, it looked like Ouida would once again be discharged from the hospital and sent home. I observed one of her physical therapy sessions, a not very successful effort to stand her up from her hospital bed. “She’s lazy,” the doctor declared to me. Ouida died less than two weeks later. Madame Physician, first, do no harm. Bitch.
Ouida and I talked about plans for her to move to Florida to be near her daughters. She liked to talk about the future. She liked for me to hold her hand and rub her arm. I read her the blog I wrote about our eccentric mother. Ouida laughed till the tears rolled down her face. In her final few days, we communicated less well, between my deafness and her struggle to say anything at all. The last thing she said to me, and not for the first time, was, “I love you.” Not, “I’m in pain.” Not, “my life is over.” Not, “It’s time for me to lay this burden down.” But, “I love you.” The sweet taste of those words on her tongue and that thought in her mind and that feeling in her heart.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
Thursday, November 22, 2007
November 22, A Day I Can't Forget
Today’s current generation may well be defined by 9/11 for the rest of its life the way my parents’ generation was irrevocably shaped by December 7. For my own generation, the unforgetable date was November 22, the day in 1963 that John F. Kennedy was assassinated as his motorcade drove past the Texas Book Repository in Dallas. That anniversary comes and goes with a certain memory of being stunned and never quite being the same again.
Just after lunch on Nov. 22, 1963, I was standing at my desk in the city room of The Atlanta Journal where I worked as a very junior reporter for that newspaper. I had my desk telephone to my ear and was talking to my Daddy. He often made a point of mentioning to me that one of his friends would show him an article in the Atlanta Journal with a By-Line of the same name as his. These articles might be about anything that was the news of the day, but much of the news of those days was about the end of racial segregation in its many forms. The Atlanta newspapers were known to be supporting it. My Daddy’s friends were not. Nor was he. Still, he liked to call me at work and pass a few minutes. I always had the sense, despite everything, he was proud of what I did. As we spoke on the telephone that after-lunch hour on Nov. 22, 1963, the bells on the teletype machines in the newsroom sounded an alarm. Somebody shouted something, and I said to my Daddy, “I’ve got to go. The President has just been shot.” I’ll never forget the moment or the words.
In a matter of minutes, the newspaper shifted gears. Just like in the old movies. I actually heard, “Stop The Presses.” One of my regular jobs was to do the daily feature called the “Street Poll.” Take a photographer to the streets of downtown Atlanta and ask six or eight people their opinions on some current topic. That day, at that hour, Harold E. Davis, City Editor of The Journal, dispatched me immediately to get people-in-the-street quotes on this obviously historic event. By the time I returned from collecting these reactions on the corner of Forsyth and Marietta Streets, John F. Kennedy was dead. My minor journalistic contribution to a historic edition of The Atlanta Journal ran on page one, down at the bottom of the page, well below the banner headline “KENNEDY KILLED” and the masthead “EXTRA.”
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, actual dates notwithstanding, ended the era of the 1950’s and began the 1960’s. It ushered in a parade of nonsense, typified by explaining that Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, and President Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, and somehow this information was worthy of consideration. Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, The Warren Commission, Jim Garrison, Oliver Stone. What a cast of characters! Maximum heat, minimum light. The Kennedy Administration was no Camelot. After the Peace Corps, his New Frontier proposals bogged down in Congress. Only national mourning and the legislative skills of Lyndon Johnson passed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
I watched a documentary on TV the other night about the assassination of President Kennedy. For 40-plus years, I’ve never been able to keep my eyes off those familiar, old grainy black and white television recordings, newspaper photographs, and 8mm home-movies turned historical documents. Ruby shooting Oswald. Gruesome impact of the bullet that took the back of the President’s head off. Mrs. Kennedy’s heroism, beginning with her pulling the Secret Service Agent into the open-top car as it rushed the wounded President to the hospital. The full color newsreels of the handsome, young President and his much photographed, thirty-something wife arriving in Texas that morning and walking down the stairs of the airplane, she in her pink suit, spotless.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
Just after lunch on Nov. 22, 1963, I was standing at my desk in the city room of The Atlanta Journal where I worked as a very junior reporter for that newspaper. I had my desk telephone to my ear and was talking to my Daddy. He often made a point of mentioning to me that one of his friends would show him an article in the Atlanta Journal with a By-Line of the same name as his. These articles might be about anything that was the news of the day, but much of the news of those days was about the end of racial segregation in its many forms. The Atlanta newspapers were known to be supporting it. My Daddy’s friends were not. Nor was he. Still, he liked to call me at work and pass a few minutes. I always had the sense, despite everything, he was proud of what I did. As we spoke on the telephone that after-lunch hour on Nov. 22, 1963, the bells on the teletype machines in the newsroom sounded an alarm. Somebody shouted something, and I said to my Daddy, “I’ve got to go. The President has just been shot.” I’ll never forget the moment or the words.
In a matter of minutes, the newspaper shifted gears. Just like in the old movies. I actually heard, “Stop The Presses.” One of my regular jobs was to do the daily feature called the “Street Poll.” Take a photographer to the streets of downtown Atlanta and ask six or eight people their opinions on some current topic. That day, at that hour, Harold E. Davis, City Editor of The Journal, dispatched me immediately to get people-in-the-street quotes on this obviously historic event. By the time I returned from collecting these reactions on the corner of Forsyth and Marietta Streets, John F. Kennedy was dead. My minor journalistic contribution to a historic edition of The Atlanta Journal ran on page one, down at the bottom of the page, well below the banner headline “KENNEDY KILLED” and the masthead “EXTRA.”
The assassination of John F. Kennedy, actual dates notwithstanding, ended the era of the 1950’s and began the 1960’s. It ushered in a parade of nonsense, typified by explaining that Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln, and President Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, and somehow this information was worthy of consideration. Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, The Warren Commission, Jim Garrison, Oliver Stone. What a cast of characters! Maximum heat, minimum light. The Kennedy Administration was no Camelot. After the Peace Corps, his New Frontier proposals bogged down in Congress. Only national mourning and the legislative skills of Lyndon Johnson passed the 1964 Civil Rights Bill.
I watched a documentary on TV the other night about the assassination of President Kennedy. For 40-plus years, I’ve never been able to keep my eyes off those familiar, old grainy black and white television recordings, newspaper photographs, and 8mm home-movies turned historical documents. Ruby shooting Oswald. Gruesome impact of the bullet that took the back of the President’s head off. Mrs. Kennedy’s heroism, beginning with her pulling the Secret Service Agent into the open-top car as it rushed the wounded President to the hospital. The full color newsreels of the handsome, young President and his much photographed, thirty-something wife arriving in Texas that morning and walking down the stairs of the airplane, she in her pink suit, spotless.
Copyright 2007 by William C. Cotter
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