In Memoriam

Remembering Pete- Part 1

To call Pete a folk music icon is to make an understatement. His life and career made more of a difference than we will ever know. Over the past week since he died at age 94, the tributes have been coming from far and wide. I noted in passing that there were even those from people I know did not and would never approve of his politics.

I never met Pete, or even saw him in concert. Yet his music has been a presence in my life- even a defining presence- for the past 50 years since I first heard Where Have All the Flowers Gone sung by him- and, believe it or not, a haunting version in German sung by Marlene Dietrich.

I was not yet the "hippie peacenik" I would become. The song, in and of itself, didn't make me into one. Instead what it did was introduce me to a type of music that was not yet in my consciousness- American Folk Music. It showed me that before rock and roll protest songs, there was another type of song that could touch the soul with awareness and conviction.

I am going to spend some time reflecting on Pete Seeger this week. He was a man whose life and music crossed three-quarters of a century and more changes than we could have even dreamed possible in 1938 when he settled in New York and began a remarkable career.

He was controversial at many different times in these 75 years. He faced stiff opposition and great pressure to conform. His stubborn opinion that he lived in a great and FREE nation never left him. He kept singing about it and making sure it remained so.

So to start a series of remembering Pete, a tribute posted on You Tube by the wonderful people at the Newport Folk Festival:

And thanks to the wonders of the Internet and You Tube, here is Marlene Dietrich asking Pete's eternal question:

Wann wird man je versteh´n, wann wird man je versteh´n?

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

A "Saint"'s Birthday

From Religion and Ethics Newsweekly:
 

Thomas Merton, 1915-1968

It’s the birthday today, January 31, of Thomas Merton—Trappist monk, prolific writer, and Catholic contemplative: “There is a certain innocence in not having a solution. There is a certain innocence in a kind of despair: but only if in despair we find salvation. I mean despair of this world and what is in it. Despair of men and of their plans in order to hope for the impossible answer that lies beyond our earthly contradictions, and yet can burst into our world and solve them only if there are some who hope in spite of despair.”

In Memoriam: Herb Ellis

Herb Ellis, the jazz guitar virtuoso, died earlier in the week at age 88. A remarkable musician he played on many recordings and with the Oscar Peterson Trio. I gather from the news reports that he has had Alzheimer's. He was one of the true greats of jazz.

(In one of those Six Degrees of Separation-kind of things, I had
the opportunity a number of years ago to briefly get to know Ellis's
son.)

A 65-Year Memory: Not to Be Forgotten

One of the greatest wartime events in history was the Invasion of Normandy - D-Day - on Jun 6, 1944. It was the beginning of the end, as they say, of World War II.

One of the movies that deeply affected me in my high school years was the drama made about this- The Longest Day. It had a huge list of stars from Eddie Albert and Paul Anka, through Sean Connery and Henry Fonda to Rod Steiger and John Wayne.

Until Saving Private Ryan came along it was the ultimate story of D-Day. I can still remember the emotion and feelings in the early 60s to seeing D-Day pictures, whether in old pictures, newsreels or movies. It wasn't even quite 20 years after the event at that time. The reactions to it were still visceral, profound, stirring, and frightening. They were not history or on-screen drama. These were still recent events even for those of us who were born a few years later when the ones who could come home returned to build their American dream.

It's hard to recreate that. There has been nothing like it since- for which we should be grateful. So today, as we hopefully will take some time to pause and remember, may we also say a prayer that the day might come when we will learn war no more. I can think of no greater memorial to those who fought and died in that now long-ago war and in all the ones ever since.

Here's an old official video made about D-Day:

In Memoriam: Coach J.

He was my daughter's softball coach and a teacher at her high school. He and another teacher were the chaperones that took her and a bunch of students for her first trip to Europe. He was a basketball and volleyball coach.

And he was a wonderful human being.

Eleven years ago while my daughter was still in high school, Steve (Coach J. as everyone knew him) got a lymphoma that went inward. Often the worst kind of cancer. We all knew he had only months to live. Everyone but him. And God. It went into remission, disappeared.

Until a few weeks ago when they told him that it was only a matter of time. He took it with the same calm and grace that he did everything. Except maybe coaching. It didn't look very calm... he loved to yell and stomp. But there was always grace and the players loved him! When I asked my daughter about it the other day she just laughed. "That was Coach J., Dad. That was just the way he was."

What a guy.

Steve died on Tuesday, many years and a lot of life after we thought he was gone. We - as much as Steve- were given a gift.

Here's a portion of his obituary in the Watertown (WI) Daily-Times:

Steve was well-known for teaching excellence. Whether in the classroom, on the playing field or the basketball court, he had a legendary ability to inspire curiosity and passion.

Steve believed that knowledge about others creates caring and he accomplished this by leading students on innumerable trips abroad. He demonstrated consistently how learning about the world can create a hospitable, enjoyable and peaceful place. Steve easily engaged people of many ages, cultures and dispositions. Children in New Guinea, referees on the basketball floor, exchange students at Friday morning breakfasts - all Steve met were drawn into a world of action, generosity and possibility. And, his varied students learned how to earn friendships at home and abroad.

Though he ventured to the far reaches of this earth, to Steve growing at home was as important as it was overseas. In 1994, with seed money he received from the Joe Darcey Excellence in Teaching award, Steve and his students undertook a monumental task in the creation of the International Peace Garden that graces the grounds of Watertown High School campus.

Steve's life created joy, peace and passion that will live on in many others.

In Memory: Robert Jordan

The "Wheel of Time" has stopped for author Robert Jordan. He wrote the extremely popular fantasy series The Wheel of Time, now at 11 books. He was working on # 12 at the time of his death. While the books get tedious if you read them one after the other, they are one of the most remarkable and well-constructed fantasy world series around. He was 58. I guess in the end no Aes Sedai or Dragons Reborn can truly stop the wheel from turning.

In Memory-
Boots (Yakety Sax) Randolph
The old line may be that I respect a man who can play the sax (pause) and doesn't.

But that didn't apply to Boots Randolph. His song may be best known today thanks to Benny Hill, but he was quite a showman.

He was 80.

Memorial Day, 2007

As we pause today to remember all who have given their lives for our freedoms for these past 231+ years, may we especially not forget those who have died in the past four years or the nearly 1000 since last Memorial Day.

They are not the ones to be angry at.
They are not the ones who started it.
They are the ones who were willing to do their job to its best.

May the days of this war be numbered. Not to run away from a fight, but to remember that sometimes we may make mistakes. And as is so often the case ones who did nothing to start it are the ones who die.

In Honor of My Father's Generation
I watched Flags of Our Fathers yesterday. It is Clint Eastwood's movie in honor of the Greatest Generation- my Dad's generation and a perfect movie for Memorial Day. It is, I believe, almost as good as Letters from Iwo Jima but a little more nostalgic and even preachy. That probably explains why Flags was not given the honors that Iwo Jima was.

As with Saving Private Ryan, Flags does not beautify the horrors of war. Nor does it make bigger-than-life heroes. Based on a true book by the son of one of the men who raised the flag in Iwo Jima in the now iconic picture, it is as much a son-father love story as it is a war story. It puts the war into the all-too-familiar world of politics which even WW II, the great war that saved western civilization, fell. It is even there the same political grayness that all wars produce.

It is a story about our need for heroes and how we manufacture them out of people like you and me. In reality it tells us, they were heroes for far different reasons than raising a flag. They were heroes because they went and did what they had to do when placed in life and death situations. Like the book and HBO series Band of Brothers about the war in Europe, this reminds us that, while they were fighting for their country and freedom, they were fighting for their friends.

Eastwood uses his soundtrack beautifully as the good composer and musician he his. He weaves a tale with flashbacks and voice overs that become a little confusing - or a little too preachy from time to time. Yet, above all else, he uses his considerable skills to demystify the war yet elevate it to a whole new level- the level of human beings placed into awful, truly horrific situations- and somehow manage to carry some dignity into their post-war lives. Even the tragic figure of Ira Hayes is, through it all, a man who lives a dignified humanity when all around him and even within him is falling apart.

My father was a medical corpsman in Europe at the Battle of the Bulge. He died when I was still a teenager, but I doubt I would ever have heard any of his stories, like the narrator in the movie commented about his dad, "Doc" Bradley. Watching Ryan Phillipe bring Bradley's hell to life, I had an even deeper understanding of my father and the private hell he lived with for nearly 20 years. In fact, he died just a couple weeks shy of the 20th anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge in 1964.

The movie does not make war any more palatable. It is brutal and awful and beyond the imagination of anyone who has never been there. I never have. Today I give thanks for those who have and who have helped keep this nation free. Back during Vietnam many made the mistake of blaming the soldiers along with the politicians. What an awful, awful mistake! Today I remember again what they all have gone through and how much it changed them- and keeps us free to be the nation they fought for.

Thank you to all of you.

And Dad, thank you.