My Turn: Bus stop reflections on speaking up

I was sitting on the front porch waiting for the school bus with my granddaughter G.G. (Gorgeous Granddaughter). I cherished these precious moments bonding with her, but also hoped the bus would come before she drove me crazier than I already was for signing up for “bus duty” in the first place.

She started off by asking, “How old are you?” When I answered, she swung into gear with a slew of questions.

“Do you remember Martin Luther King Jr.?”

“Sure do.”

“When he was alive? You remember his march in Washington? You were living then too??”

“Yeah, I watched from a distance. I had a dream,” I quoted. Then, I reflected on how I wished I did more to support that dream. How I admired the people who marched for freedom back then. As she struggled with the idea that her grandma witnessed her recent history lesson, the words to Aretha Franklin’s “R-E-S-P-E-C-T” tumbled around in my head, along with freedom songs of the ’60s. “If I had a hammer,” I sang out loud, referencing the Peter, Paul and Mary song.

“How did you feel when he got killed?” she asked.

“So scared. I thought his dream for freedom would be lost forever and there would be more rioting, everywhere,” I said.

“ . . . But that didn’t happen, right?”

“Let’s say some of Dr. King’s message got through. Laws were passed that not only inspired racial tolerance, but protected the poor and disabled throughout the country, yet we must not forget how easily we can fall backward again.”

G.G. carefully studied me like I was a talking relic, resurrected up from an archeological dig.

“Did you go to Woodstock?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

I explained that I was a little older than most of the people who went there. I was married with a child, a husband and house — part of the establishment. I didn’t approve of the drugs and the wild behavior of the participants, but was there in spirit . . . blah, blah, blah.

“Were you a dove or a hawk?” she asked.

Luckily, the bus arrived, which enabled me to dodge the question. “I’ll tell you later,” I said.

“Never mind, Grandma, I know. You were no hawk.”

How could she know? Especially since, in the beginning, I thought we were fighting the good war in Vietnam. Once I saw the destruction and realized that the privileged could avoid the draft and that we were losing at a terrible cost, I began to lean toward the bird of peace. But I stayed on the fence. Did I get out and march — face the fire hoses or write one letter of protest?

I decided to talk with G.G. “tomorrow” and tell her that during those days, I didn’t speak out, for fear of offending my “friends and neighbors.” And that the bird I was more closely associated with was a chicken.

Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll tell G.G. that it is never too late to take a stand for your true values. We see now, as history dreadfully repeats itself, that freedom can’t be taken for granted or expected to endure if we don’t fight like our forefathers to preserve liberty and justice “all over this land.”

Thank you, Dr. King; Peter, Paul and Mary; Aretha. And thank Heaven for G.G.

June Capossela Kempf

St. James