1 Boring Old Man

As I watched Andrew Young brought to tears in an interview on CNN just now talking about King’s assassination, I had a thought that I’ve had countless times before. I know that they put MLK Day on his birthday rather than the day of his assassination to get us to celebrate King’s Llfe rather than mourn his loss. That sounds like a good idea, but it doesn’t fool a lot of us – certainly not Andrew Young. I doubt it fools many of us who were in Memphis in those days.

I’ve chronicled my story as an Intern at the City of Memphis Hospital enough, times but it remains my personal Viet Nam – a time when the world became insane. No holiday gerimandering will change that for me. At the time of King’s death, I was frustrated with him. I thought he’d bitten off too much. Our cause was Civil Rights, and he’d taken on hunger, and Viet Nam, and the whole host of what would’ve been called the "liberal laundry list" in those days. I thought he was diluting what we were about, desegregating the South, with too much idealism. He was making more enemies, and we already had all we needed. But who am I to say? What he did might never have happened without his idealism. He was the greatest man of my time, and you can’t argue with greatness. The assassination was hard for me, – to be one of the few "liberals" on the house staff of a large southern charity hospital, to be a King supporter, to be mad at King’s recent choices, and to be in a town gone totally mad with rage. When RFK was assassinated and then Nixon get elected, it seemed like the weight of the ages had descended on everything we knew. Within a couple of years [busy with medical training], we were whisked off to Europe by an Air Force draft notice. In retrospect, that was a good thing. It gave us some time to restructure our priorities – settle down. We left Europe in late June 1974, and Nixon resigned in July [I started to send him a personal thank you letter, but I didn’t know his new address]. That resignation made it easier to be home – more hopeful.

I’m mostly over my guilt for being angry at him when he was killed. I think I was wrong – not the first or last time. Actually, I’m still in awe that he ever existed in the first place. I think of Martin Luther King, Andy Young, and John Lewis as some of the wisest and bravest men in history. I hope all three of them make it on the Memorial that should be built on Washington’s Mall. It’s been easy for me to be brought to tears these last few days, but watching John Lewis and Andy Young being interviewed today was the most stirring thing yet. It brings back the insanity of only forty years ago, and this inauguration more than justifies Martin Luther King’s idealism, and his faith in people.