Grandpa Abe, Bobby and Barack
Sean Sagan
November 3, 2008
Grandpa Abe, Bobby and Barack
A few years ago my mother took a Sunday morning to go through some old boxes that had been accumulating dust in the garage and indeed in several garages before that. What she was looking for specifically at the onset of her search I do not know. In all likelihood she was searching for a means by which to alleviate the boredom of an uneventful Sunday. At the time I was living at my parent’s home so there was nothing to prevent my mom from waking me up at the godless hour of 9:00 am to excitedly show me what she had discovered. “Sean look!” she implored as something square and brown crossed my hazy morning line of sight and landed on my bed. “What is it?” I mumbled, still half asleep. She replied, “It’s your grandfather’s wallet.”
My Grandpa Abe - my mother’s father - had died when I was four. Some of my earliest memories are of him. I remember him picking lemons in the back yard, sneaking candy to me from behind Grandma Martha’s back, and giving “wackos” which consisted of chasing after his grandchildren with a rolled up newspaper and threatening, jokingly, to hit them with it. I barely remember his passing but I’m told that I took it pretty hard.
Grandpa Abe’s wallet smelled like him. It was one of those ineffable “memory scents” whose specifics you can’t quite discern but which is immediately recognizable even though you haven’t encountered it in over twenty years. It was soft and faded; a mocha tan. The creases crinkled like vellum and it had the worn and musty look that familial artifacts acquire after sixty or more years of use and storage. Yet it was the scent that really shook me up, the smells of old leather, paper, tobacco and cologne which I could discern, and those that weren’t there but that memory triggered; lemons, chlorine, old carpet, Birds of Paradise, a musty cabana, matzo ball soup, short ribs, ambrosia salad and everything else that made up my grandparents house in Ladera Heights. In a flash, almost a quarter century of buried memories came rushing back.
So nu? I opened the wallet.
It had more or less what one would expect in a wallet, minus money (“My sisters probably took any money that was in it!” my mom who was not speaking to her sisters at the time exclaimed). It had insurance cards, business cards, a social security card, a funeral kaddish from his mother’s passing in 1950, a Selective Service notice from 1941, a Woolworths tag from a marked down shirt ($6.50 to $5.50 - Oy such a deal) and a California voter stub. It was dated June 4, 1968. It was the date of the California primary election and my Grandfather no doubt voted for Robert F. Kennedy. A few hours later and a few miles from my grandparent’s home at the Ambassador Hotel, Bobby Kennedy was shot dead.
Robert Kennedy was more than the younger brother of Jack, more than an ordinary politician and yes even more than the glamorous celebrity of the Kennedy Camelot. He was to so many people, the embodiment of the necessary change that would transform our great nation into a just and equitable land. He was not a leader but a capstone at the pinnacle of a movement that would have transformed the politics of fear and hate to the politics of brotherhood and hope. He was as Hunter would say, “the crest of a high and beautiful wave.” But that light, along with the light of his brother, the light of Dr. King, and the light of peace, justice and equality would be snuffed out by bullets, bombs and Vietnam for a generation to come. People whose names we now know all to well would begin to gain prominence during the following decades under the presidencies of Nixon, Ford, and Reagan. Names like Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, the Bushes, all began their rise to power.
Times have been dark, events darker still. We have seen the harvest of economic destruction, whose seeds sown by Reagan, have been reaped by Bush and allies like John McCain. We have seen the blood dimmed tides of pointless war, loosed upon the world for the enrichment of wealthy coffers. We have seen the politics of fear and division wash like a toxic flood across this nation creating discord between black and white, male and female, young and old, gay and straight, rich and poor. Though we have visited small islands of sunlight amidst the sea of political shadow, our calm harbors have been few and far between. Our journey has been long, cold, and arduous.
I can only speculate that my grandfather saved that voting stub for the same reason he saved his mother’s Kaddish; out of grief for a dream destroyed. But so too do I believe that in that grief hid a glimmer of hope. A hope that one day the American people could once again mobilize under the banners of justice, brotherhood and change, a hope of all immigrant families that with hard work anyone could see their dreams fulfilled. A Hope for a figure that would be that spearhead, penetrating the dark politics of division, a hope that someone, somewhere, someday would pick up where Bobby and Dr. King left off.
Barack Obama is no savior, he is no messiah, and he is no avatar of fate. He is the right capstone for the structure of change that ‘we the people built.’ He will not be a perfect president, but he will, with our help, move this nation back to its rightful place, that shining city on a hill, that beacon of hope that we once were to people throughout the world. United we stand, divided we fall and we have been falling for far too long. What is tomorrow about? Is it about, taxes, Iraq, earmarks, and healthcare? Is it about abortion, marriage, education, and the environment? Yes, absolutely, issues are important. We need peace, healthcare, economic relief, environmental responsibility, government reform and so much more. But, in a profound and fundamental way, this election is indeed about change and hope; hope that had been so lacking, its absence gripped us as thirst grips a man without water. Change so important that the knowledge of its necessity shakes us to the core of our very beings.
Tomorrow we stand up to take back not only our country and our constitution but our homes, our families, our lives and our freedoms. Tomorrow stand up and say “No!” We will not disappear quietly into the night. We will fight for our nation and our identity. We are not mere demographics to be divided as politicians see fit. We are not blue Americans or red Americans, real Americans or fake Americans. We are not white, black, gay, straight, old, young, male, female, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Asian, Latino, rich or poor Americans. We are the United States of America and the time has come to stand in concert and see followed though, the visions of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Franklin Roosevelt, JFK and Bobby, Dr. Martin Luther King and so many others. The time has come to bring to fruition the dreams of our grandparents.