Amazing Grace

“Music is the great uniter. An incredible force. Something that people who differ on everything and anything else can have in common.” ― Sarah Dessen

Today I am leaving Hungry Horse behind. Yes, I am still in Montana and surviving. I am getting off topic because of a music video I watched this morning that sent me spiraling back in time. I will share more about that with you later.

We are living in tumultuous times, times of great change. In the last few weeks we have been hit with a lot in the news. We’ve all been there, so I am not going to rehash it. I want to take time out and revisit another time of great change…back to the 1950’s, a respite between World War II and a precursor to the crazy 60’s. I remember learning the Pledge of Allegiance in first grade, only to have the second-grade teacher tell us that President Eisenhower had added a phrase to the Pledge of Allegiance and we had to learn to add “One Nation Under God” when we said the Pledge as we saluted the flag every morning at school.

We all watched the evening news (in black and white – there was no color TV) when President Eisenhower called out the National Guard so black children in Selma, Alabama could safely attend schools with white children. Some awful people bombed a black church, killing children. Back then everything was segregated and there were restrooms and drinking fountains labeled “white” and “black.” On a Montgomery, Alabama bus, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man, causing a great outcry and sparking a boycott. I am glad all that changed. But change is difficult, harder for some more than others. The Black Panther party advocated violence and Dr. Martin Luther King advocated for peaceful change. There were race riots. Kids were bussed out of their school districts to integrate the schools. My high school was integrated in 1963. It caused a lot of commotion and some parents were angry, including mine. To be honest, my parents were racist because that’s the way they were brought up and they didn’t know any better. The chain was broken with my brother and me. In our school we accepted the change. Most of us got along and learned from each other. Some didn’t. It wasn’t just in the south. A group of senior boys on our football team burned a cross on the lawn of a rival school in south Seattle. They were expelled from school.

I hate the term African American because it sounds like they are not fully American, but a branch thereof. There are no “black Americans” or “white Americans” or “Asian American’s” or “Native Americans,” etc. only Americans.  We are a melting pot and it’s time to own it. Once years ago, I referred to a co-worker of Japanese descent, as Asian American. Instantly angry, she told me, “I am an American, NOT Asian American.” She was right and it completely changed my viewpoint. We are all simply Americans and there should be no distinction. Labels keep us divided. I am seeing too much division because of words and labels these days.

Books and reading were important to our family. From an early age either my mother or my older brother read me a bedtime story every night. Other than Black Beauty, one of my favorites was the story of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Much has been made about how racist this book was. It’s a remake of a folk tale with origins in Africa, that came to me in the form of a Little Golden Book with pictures.  It was about a crafty fox trying to catch a rabbit…a lot like the Roadrunner series years later – a universal trickster theme. This story was written by Joel Chandler Harris in the late 1800’s about a blonde girl, Alice, growing up on a plantation and visiting wise old Uncle Remus at his house in the area where the Slaves lived. He would tell her stories about Brer Rabbit outsmarting Brer Fox (Brer being shorthand for brother). Brer Fox fashions a doll out of tar and turpentine and sets it along a road to catch Brer Rabbit. Brer Rabbit speaks to the Tar-Baby, gets angry when it does not answer him, strikes and kicks the figure, headbutting it only to become hopelessly stuck. Brer Rabbit had to use ingenuity to get unstuck. It’s a great story.  I hoped one day to meet Uncle Remus because he seemed like a really neat guy. The book was written about a time in history and the way it was in the author’s life, a bit different than recorded history. If we erase the past, we are doomed to make the same mistakes again. But I digress.

I was barely in high school when on November 22, 1963 President Kennedy was assassinated. We all left our classes and milled around on the sidewalk outside of school, shocked, talking, some crying, and wondering what in the world was happening. The Principal did not close school that day, but many kids left anyway.

The day after President Kennedy was killed, I saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot, live on television. The world seemed to be turning upside down. President Kennedy’s funeral was televised. His flag-draped casket was carried on a caisson drawn by six white horses, three riderless, from the East Wing of the White House to the Capitol to lay in state for 24 hours. Kennedy’s spirited black horse, “Black Jack” followed behind the caisson, riderless, with Kennedy’s riding boots backward in the stirrups. Crowds stood silently as the funeral cortege passed by.

The next day, the same procession took the casket to Funeral Mass and afterwards to the interment at Arlington. I will never forget the clopping of horse’s hooves on the pavement, accompanied by drums, Navy band playing the mournful funeral march (Frédéric Chopin's Piano Sonata No 2 in B flat minor), the tolling of the church bells, Black Watch bagpipes and finally, the bugler playing Taps. These things should be remembered. It’s history and I am not sure we would see such pageantry now. Tradition is sometimes lost amidst change. This is the short version. Notice how people used to dress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KJQkn6zUvM

With the 60’s we also witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King, and Robert F. Kennedy. During the Vietnam “conflict” there were anti-war riots and sit-down protests. War correspondents from different news agencies were dispatched into Vietnam to film what it was like there. The evening news, which my parents watched every night, ran video clips of actual battles, live. Raw, ugly war was brought right to our dinner tables. Boys I went to school with were shipped over to fight with only six weeks of “boot camp” and dropped into what can only be described as hell.  Many never returned. Those who did, were never the same. Something that has not changed.

I saw the advent of the hippy movement. Boys I grew up with who sported buzz cuts, grew their hair down to their shoulders, did drugs and flashed the peace symbol at everyone. Music changed. It was a time of great change, like the times we are in now. Many of you – most of you reading this, can’t really grasp what life was really like back then, but life goes in cycles and what we have been going through the past few years is feeling very familiar.

It's easy to get wrapped up in rhetoric in times like this and start taking sides. We forget that divided we fall. It’s also easy to lose sight of who we are and what this country means to us. Recently I was shown a music video that stirred memories of innocent times in my childhood that I want to share.

My family moved to Seattle from Texas in the 1950’s. Our house was in the northeast area, near Lake Washington in the area of Windermere and I attended Laurelhurst elementary. We moved there to be close to the University of Washington. Not far down the road, Sandpoint Way, was the Sandpoint Naval Air Station. World War II was a recent memory and many military installations in the area were still active. Sandpoint NAS was closed many years later. The runways became cracked, taken over by weeds. The base was later turned into a park.

My father was a U.S. Navy veteran from WWII. Before that he had served as a U.S. Customs officer on the southern border in McAllen, Texas. Recently McAllen has been in the news related to issues at the southern border. I am giving this background so you understand that I grew up in a deeply faith-based family that honored our country and those who gave their lives for it. Disrespecting our flag tramples on their sacrifice and their memory.

As kids, we played softball in the street, rode bikes, roller skated, and ventured off into the woods to see what we could find. When I joined the Girl Scouts, I attended meetings on the naval base. We ended each meeting singing the words to Taps. Every day, when the sun went down, the bugle playing Taps could be heard from our house. No matter what we were doing, we would stop, even in mid-sentence and listen. If I was outdoors playing with friends, Taps was the musical notice that I had better be home, in the house, before it ended. It was the same with all the kids in my neighborhood. That song carries a heavy meaning with it. It was played at Kennedy’s funeral. It was played by uniformed veterans at my father’s funeral. So when I watched this music video performed by Dave Bray, it brought back memories and teary eyes. Dave Bray is also a U.S. Navy veteran. He shares his musical gift by honoring our country, our veterans – all of them -- including armed services, fire, police and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Bray’s version of the Star-Spangled Banner is amazing and I hope you will take time to listen to it as well as this video that I am sharing. He has melded Taps with the hymn, Amazing Grace and I dare you to get through it without tearing up, even just a little bit. He is a prayer warrior.

Amazing Grace

Day is done

Gone the sun

From the lake, from the hills, from the sky

All is well

Safely rest

God is nigh

Star Spangled Banner video: Star Spangled Banner