First, the previous two newsletters for your perusal are thus:

Moving Forward

Dr. King - The Final Speech

The most recent newsletter I just sent out about five minutes ago, and it touches upon the topic of this post in more of a diagnostic breakdown of his final speech. This post isn't that, though; it's more of what it felt like at the time.

Most people will say that an 8 year old child has no real comprehension of what's going on around them. I don't believe that kind of thing, especially as we start hearing about more and more children perpetrating some of the worst crimes you can think of. Still, it is possible that, at 8 years old, we don't really fully understand societal issues all that much, even if they're thrust in our face at the time.

Well, I can safely say that, living on a military base, I didn't have to deal with many of the injustices that others did during those times. But it didn't mean that my parents didn't every once in awhile alert me to something they felt was important. I was only 3 years old when Dr. King gave his 'I Have A Dream' speech in 1963, and I'm not even sure if I was in the country at the time, since we moved to Tokyo, Japan for 3 years around then. I was back in the states, though, for his final speech. And I don't remember why I was home, but I remember my parents having me watch the speech as it was broadcast live, and in retrospect that was more interesting that one might think.

After all, it wasn't a major occasion like it had been with his '63 speech, where somewhere between 250,000 and 500,000 people crowded themselves near the Washington Monument. And there were only 3 real channels at the time; PBS was so new that we didn't even have an antenna to get those channels. Yet, I saw the speech, and though I didn't understand most of it, I heard this great man speak live for the first and last time on that day.

Because the next day, 40 years ago today, he was assassinated, and I remember dealing with that in my own way also. I didn't cry, but I was confused. They sent us home from school early; the base was on full alert. Police were everywhere, surrounding schools, watching federal and state buildings, worried about signs of violence that did come in many cities across the country; I don't remember if it happened near where I was.

It's somewhat odd to realize that I'm alive when someone I actually heard and saw while alive, even if it was only that one time, now has a national holiday named after him. And it couldn't have been for a better man.