No one could tell the story of the 60s better than Doris Kearns Goodwin, especially as seen through her and husband Richard Goodwin’s lived experiences, vivid memories, box after box of words and picture artifacts, and so much love, passion, and intelligence for and with each other and their friends and associates—key players all, in a time and in places never to be forgotten. And all here in An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s.
I claim it, just a little, as my story too. It is when I became a Democrat.
Once upon a time, there was a young woman, just turned 21 years old, who could vote for the very first time. She did just that, casting that starter vote for Richard M. Nixon—an act for which she has been apologizing ever since. That was me of course and, just what you might ask, is my excuse. Well, you see, my mom was a devout Christian and a Republican. Before you equate her in anyway with the present-day faux-Christian followers of the Maga-cult, comprised mainly of easily-led, frightened, and ill-informed members of a once-normal political organization, let me just say She Was Not In Any Way Like Them. Ovidia could find good in most things, and two of her most frequent warnings to her children were ‘not to make too much of ourselves’ (meaning don’t be prideful and/or judgmental) and not to use the word ‘hate’ (unless referring to spiders). Easy to see the differences between then and now, right?
So, being a not atypical teenager (meaning I paid little attention to politics), and having grown up under Ike (one of those old-fashioned, slightly-boring, sane Republicans), and also having a politically-disinterested dad, voting as mom did seemed to make sense. By November 8, 1960, although I was by then the young wife of an (apolitical) airman, the young mother of Donald Scott, and a resident of Florida (so long ago there was No Disneyland!), there seemed to be no reason not to cast my first-ever vote as a Republican.
I remained a Republican for 74 days. Then, on January 20, 1961, our new President, John F. Kennedy delivered his inaugural address. These words still echo in my memory:
We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans–born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage–and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world....All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin. ...And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
And voila…a Democratic family was born.
There are life’s snapshots, right? Memories, often brief, but with photographic clarity. Me, sitting on the reddish couch (did it have shiny threads?) in the fairly basic living room (brown tiled floor, forgettable everything else), in a yellowy-tan concrete block house amidst moss-draped live oaks surrounding a cluster of look-alike dwellings on the shores of Lake Conway in Pinecastle, Florida. My baby must be asleep, I’m drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes (yeah, yeah, not a good-mother picture I know), and watching TV. JFK in black and white. So young and passionate…so not Nixon.
Previously my political awareness had been of the shallowest measure, even though neither the world nor the US were short of big events, many of them stemming from the Cold War—that battle between Russia, China, and the US for world domination—that competition between capitalism and communism which I didn’t grasp for a minute. But never mind that; not high on my list of concerns anyway compared to how to get off the little farm in the north woods and do whatever one did next if you didn’t have the know how or wherewithal to head for college.
I was reading about and paying some attention to civil rights happenings in the south. Feeling repulsed by the actions and reactions of southerners to African American struggles for equality—while being almost totally ignorant of the racism that had always been all around me regarding Native Americans in Minnesota. It wasn’t until my 1958 move to Florida that I even began to ‘get it.’ Especially when I came to have my first black friends. Suddenly the information was coming hard and fast, and events were taking on a personal edge. James Meredith, Freedom Riders, Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, all on the CBS News every night. Don and I sat on the end of our dock, wondering how high the mushroom cloud would rise over Cuba, which seemed a short distance away over Lake Conway.
Summer 1963, shortly after Steven’s birth, Don got orders to head overseas, an assignment at Clark AFB, Pampanga, Luzon, the Philippines. Family to follow in six months.
November 22, 1963. JFK murdered in Dallas. Scott and I are visiting my friend Betty Jo in North Branch, Minnesota. The soap “As the World Turns” is on. Walter Cronkite interrupts, announcing with a catch in his voice,” President Kennedy died at 1PM Central Standard Time…”
I just finished listening to Doris Goodwin’s Unfinished Love Story on the treadmill at the gym. Her beloved husband, Richard, was an integral part of JFK’s campaign and presidency, and he idolized the president. As Doris’ voice carried me toward that dark day, it remained strong, but all of the emotion of a wife mourning, not only her husband (dead not so many years earlier) and their life together, but also what might have been had JFK lived, LBJ not been defeated by Vietnam, and RFK not also been murdered. As Goodwin’s words took me to Texas, and then back to DC that terrible night, I remembered how that act began the irrevocable altering of my understanding of America; of how the mash of patriotism, nationalism, whitewashed history with which school children the world over are indoctrinated, does us all such deadly disservice.
The first realization was that my country wasn’t the safe place they told me it was. If presidents could be murdered, the rest of us didn’t stand a chance. And in all of the years since, as I’ve come to better understand that we’re still the same creatures who have been raping, pillaging, stealing, forming gangs and cults and movements, since recorded beginnings and earlier, so it doesn’t really get better or worse overall in the global village. The good and bad that we do just shifts language and culture and skin color and geography. The lucky among us will have been born just as our patch of earth is on an upswing, and live out much of our lives before the good times move on to the neighbors.
So, yeah, I’m pretty much a pessimist about the big wide world of politics. On the other hand, I love my piece of territory—at ground level so to speak. The people and geography and sounds and smells and sights. The everyday and the special events. Even the weather when it rains and the leaves turn color.
Me. The Democrat. To be continued.