ONE MEMORABLE DAY. TWO GREAT MEN

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The Bartow Elementary School Annex housed its 5th and 6th grade students. It has been razed now, but it stood next to the same softball, kickball, and tetherball field on which the well known evangelist, Rev. Billy Sunday, preached half a century earlier. 

I vividly recall my opportunity to watch the inauguration of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on a black and white television while surrounded by thirty of my peers. 

Mr. Ball walked over to the TV, pulled up it's rabbit ear antenna, and turned it on. (I think our teacher intuitively realized that long after he went on to his reward, his “6^th Grade Class of 1961” pupils would remember having witnessed history in the making).

The day dawned cold, and a significant amount of snow lay on the ground in our nation's capital city. Whenever a dignitary rose, and began to speak, he or she emitted vast amounts of white fog.

And now, Robert Frost, America’s Poet Laureate, stood and began to read a poem he wrote especially for the inauguration, "The Gift Outright." 

"The land was ours before we were the land’s.

She was our land more than a hundred years

Before we were her people..."

As he read the first few lines, the glint from sunlight on snow rested on his paper, and almost blinded him, and he was forced to continue his rendition from memory,

"Before we were her people. She was ours

In Massachusetts, in Virginia,

But we were England’s, still colonials..."

I’m doubtful any of us sufficiently appreciated what we were witnessing that day.

Now, our new president arose, and walked to the podium. He had dressed more modestly than his counterpart, President Eisenhower. While the outgoing president was attired in a dark ankle coat befitting the harsh Winter weather, the incoming president wore clothing better suited for a more temperate climate. The end of the old. The advent of the new.

…”And my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

I must admit. It was a heady thing to listen to what may have been the most eloquent and relevant inaugural address in the 20^th Century.

We could not have known at the time that our 35th president would be taken from us halfway through his first term of office.

by Bill McDonald PhD