Profiles In Courage

I was looking for something on my bookcase when I ran across this, Profiles In Courage. I have the Young Readers Memorial Edition which tells me that I received it after President Kennedy was killed. I believe it was a Christmas gift from my parents when I was around eight or nine years old. Yes, even then I was reading books that were possibly over my head.

We had a big green chair in our living room that I would curl up in and read books both at night and during the day when the weather was bad. It was a comfortable place and when I go back in my memory, it is a happy place.

Times have changed but not my reading habits. I have an old red chair that has become my favorite reading spot. I still read a lot, and hopefully continue to learn.

Reading a book should not be a passive exercise, but rather a raucous conversation. - Studs Terkel

This book was first copyrighted in 1955 and the “special foreward” by Robert F. Kennedy was copyrighted in 1964 although the foreward itself says it was written December 18, 1963, less than a month after his brother’s death.

Of course I had to open it up and re-read the foreward for the first time in over forty years, probably longer. I found it stirring and full of hope. He speaks of his brother on a personal level but also speaks of the things that influenced him, his desire to do the right thing, and to take the blame when things didn’t go as he had hoped.

I am not sure if President Kennedy actually wrote this book himself, or whether he had a “ghostwriter” like politicians do now-a-days. But to the kid who curled up in that old green chair to read, it didn’t matter.

Profiles In Courage is of a time. Filled with stories of men who stood up for what was right, going against prevailing attitudes of the time. Some of these people we studied in school. Unlike our textbooks, this book made them more alive to me and I’m not sure why? Quite possibly because it was written by a President, and that gave it more authority?

Looking back, I wish all of the chapters were not just about politicians, who were all white men,. If someone were to do a book like this today it would definitely include both males and females and people of color, but that’s for a different post.

As a kid, of course I was captivated by these stories. They helped introduce in me a life long love of history. I still love to read biographies of all types of people from the past.

I was seven when President Kennedy was assassinated and almost thirteen when Senator Robert Kennedy was gunned down. In fact, I just wrote a short story for my next book about the time I saw Robert Kennedy speak in the parking lot of our local Montgomery Ward store. Like so many others, I felt something was lost after the Senator’s death. I believe what we lost was hope.

It’s a whole different world today.

There is so much hatred in the world. I think it’s always been there but today it is amplified, thanks to politicians and the media.

As we age we like to look back fondly on earlier times and rant about how much better things were then. Conveniently forgetting how things really were. We confidently say our generation’s music, fashions, films, childhood, etc., were superior to what there is now.

Personally, I’m not sure things were that much better. No matter what part of the past you look at there were still problems and events that scared the hell out of us. When we fondly remember the past we tend to edit out the things that were unpleasant.

I suppose our capacity for self-delusion is boundless. - John Steinbeck

Rereading Robert Kennedy’s introduction so many years later I am reminded of how I felt as a kid. I really did think all things were possible.

In my own writing I tell stories of people that some refer to as “losers”. Those who have had a rough time and probably aren’t ever going to be “successful”. But how do we define success?

Over the decades I’ve known all sorts of people who were considered, “losers”, yet they all had one thing in common. Hope. They are all hoping for a better future. If not for them, then for their families.

I think about the kid sitting in that green chair and his hope for the future. And as cynical as I can be at times, deep down inside I still believe in a lot of the good things and lessons that I was taught in my reading so long ago.

I will keep Profiles In Courage on my desk for awhile and take a bit of time to reread some of those chapters that mesmerized me as a kid. I’ll also continue to search out other stories about hope. I think now more than ever we need them.

Sometimes it takes real courage to have hope.

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Thanks for reading.

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