Forty eight years ago, when I was 8 years old, my family moved from suburban Philadelphia to small town Ohio. I was the new kid in the third grade class taught by Miss Forney at Barnesville Elementary School. I had not had particularly good experiences in first and second grade and the class with Miss Foreny was no exception. My family were (and are) Democrats and it was an election year. Barnesville and the surrounds were Republican, but it would not have occurred to me to care about it much. It seemed that my acceptance into the the social life of the third grade was dependent on who I was "voting" for. I, of course, was unabashed about saying Kennedy, since that was who my parents were for.
The kids version of campaigning in Miss Forney's third grade went something like this:
The class ring leaders, whose names have long ago faded from my memory, confronted me with the ominous threat that if Kennedy was elected, soldiers would march down the streets of Barnesville and take over the town (an 8 years old's version of martial law). When that had no effect on changing my mind, there was the more blatant, we won't play with you unless you say you are for Nixon. I was distressed by this threat and felt betrayed by my one friend, whose parents were best friends with mine and a large part of the reason we moved there, who capitulated. She and her family had been living there for a year before we came and it makes me wonder, now, what that year had been like for her.
My recollection is that I never did say I was for Nixon, the kids got bored with the whole thing after a while, and when the election happened, it passed over as if nothing had actually occurred. Truth be told, it really had very little impact on their lives or mine. I didn't even think to comment on that no soldiers ever showed up. After the fact, perhaps years later, I learned a few things about that election. My own grandmother had refused to vote for Kennedy because he was Catholic. Nixon was a Quaker, like my family- only from a branch so far removed from our beliefs and practices as to be unrecognizable. It was an extremely close race. And last, but not least, President Kennedy became a much loved and respected leader even by many of those that voted against him.
Some have tried to draw parallels between that election and this one. But what strikes me this morning is the role people from the great state of Ohio have played in this historic election. It has been well documented that many Ohio voters who felt uneasy with Barak Obama's race overcame their own fears and prejudices. They were able to look beyond the color of his skin, take a courageous leap of faith and cast a ballot for the candidate that most spoke to their own issues; collectively playing a key role in electing him to the highest office of the land. I have no doubt that many if not most of those who were in my third grade class were among them.
This is a shout out to them and to all those like them, in Ohio and elsewhere, young and old, who chose to do the right thing. Thank you! You have helped restore my faith in our democracy. You have helped to restore the rest of the world's as well. Its daunting that so many, the world over, still do look to us, the United States of America, for leadership by example. The times are tough, the economic picture bleak, but we have chosen well. Kennedy was elected in prosperous times, by a slim margin. Obama has a greater mandate, but must somehow pull off a more Roosevelt-like feat without getting involved in a world war! I believe he is up to the job- but only if we do as the Ohioans have done, reach past our fears and do the right thing. The success of the Obama Presidency and the fate our our nation, depend on all of us pulling together and living into Kennedy's high but not unreasonable expectation of us to "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
