Religion in the School?

Nine years ago, a friend sent me an email regarding religion in our public schools. He specifically questioned about prayer, religious instructions and the Pledge of Allegiance. I replied by sending him a somewhat lengthy note. To my surprise, he recently provided me with an unsolicited copy of what I had written. He had saved it and I present it here in another format. I do not have his initial question, but the reply is self-explanatory:

People, including students, can and do recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Schools can and do teach the difference between right and wrong. People may not use the power of the state, any power, to force their religion on another. I was raised in a small community in which the Baptist Church was prominent. There were only three families that did not belong to the local Baptist Church; ours was one of them. The school gave property and a building to the Baptists to use as a church. We were forced to listen to that drivel on a regular basis. It was not all that uncommon to be treated as if you were ignorant, sinful and worthless if you did not belong to that church. I had to listen to more than one of their preachers engage me in religious discussion. To the surprise of no one, he could out argue a grade school kid and make him look silly. My dad was forced to resign from the school board because he would not go along with the gift of the building and the land to the Baptists.

My son recites the Pledge of Allegiance daily in Kindergarten. Washington is a small town which is also predominantly Baptist. That is fine with me. I appreciate the teachers there and the values they have and attempt to communicate. But, if I ever hear of their diminishing him or his sister as a person because they are not Baptists, you better believe I will raise hell with the school. I lived that and they will not.

People make such a cry over “taking God out of the schools.” That little purple hair prayer is no more than political rhetoric based on nothing more than hot air. My question would be, What have the parents done to assure that God is not taken out of their home? Do they pray at home? Do they discuss the Bible at home? Do they attend worship services as a family? Do they actively participate in the functions of the church? Do they stress the golden rule? The first and second commandments?

It is not the school’s job to teach religion to my children. That’s my job. With the help of the church in which we worship, I take on that responsibility. If the school interferes with my job, I will address the problem. If the school tries to take over my job, I will address that problem as well. And, if the school helps me with my job, I will be grateful.

This erosion of the separation of church and state scares me. The Taliban [this was written in 2002] is the extreme. While we deplore the Taliban, there are some “Christians” who would like to have that kind of control here in America. I do not want the church, any church, controlling the state. Equally important, I do not want the state controlling the church. This is something these people who advocate removal of this wall of separation do not realize. The wall is there for the protection of both entities.

"The Coyotes' Story"

[A selection from One Dog's Story, A Book About Life. Murphy tells her story and in this selection she explains the animosity between the dog and the coyote. She bases her story on something Beau, her best friend, once told her.]

According to Beau, and I don’t know where he got his information, coyotes are actually jealous of dogs. And they harbor a resentment bordering on hatred. It seems that when the ancient dogs entered their agreement with ancient humans, the one that said let us live with you and we will help you, they first discussed it with the coyotes. The dogs and the coyotes were cousins, more than cousins actually, they were as close as brothers in those days. The dogs proposed that they and the coyotes together approach the humans and strike a deal.

The coyotes were a little wilder than the dogs and they relished their wildness. They didn’t want to be restricted and felt such an arrangement with humans would be too confining. They turned down the dogs’ offer and laughed at them as the dogs slowly made their way toward the humans with their tails tucked between their legs and their heads hanging low. The coyotes were surprised to see the humans take the dogs in. And they were more surprised at the bond which seemed to develop so strongly between them.

Over the years, no, over the millennia, they had watched the dogs grow to be more and more a part of the humans’ lives. The dog had a warm place to sleep on a cold winter night. The coyote had to sleep out in the cold. The dog was fed on a regular basis. The coyote had to hunt and kill for his supper or he had to hope to run across a dead and rotting carcass somewhere. The coyote might go days between meals while he watched the dog being fed daily. And the coyote watched as the human scratched behind the dog’s ears. That was the most painful thing of all. The coyote had ears too but no one wanted to scratch a coyote’s ears and no one wanted to pet him and say, “Good boy, good boy.”

The Day I Spent With Andrew Lloyd Webber

Day before yesterday, God and I spent the afternoon listening to the music of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Our heart was warmed and a satisfying smile formed in my life.

The University of Oklahoma presented a special program for nearly three hours featuring the music of this master musician. It was a production involving an orchestra of more than fifty instruments, together with the featured performances of nearly as many singers and dancers. The performance was primarily by students, and some faculty, of the University. In the wings, there was a chorus made up of other university students, and adults and children from the community. This chorus consisted of about one hundred twenty voices.

The University of Oklahoma is known well for its athletics, primarily football. I am sure there are people who think of little else when they think of its present stature or its storied past. But, there is a lot more to the University than sports. It is a leading institution when it comes to theater and musical theater.

The talent showcased in this performance was outstanding. I have been fortunate to attend musical theater both locally, as performed by travelling professional groups, and in other places where only a professional performance would be accepted. The Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. can hardly allow anything other than top quality performers and performances. And, Broadway in New York City is the embodiment of excellence. While performances I have experienced in those venues have set the bar for excellence, this performance at the University met the challenge with no apologies or reservations. The orchestra was equal to anything experienced at the Kennedy Center. And, the singers and dancers were just as talented as what I have witnessed on Broadway.

The arts fuel the soul and spirit of humankind. We argue for the humanities because we want people to be grounded with a common knowledge, from there they can go on to their own area of interest and expertise. To be knowledgeable of the law and know its application is not nearly so effective if the practitioner is unaware of what made civilized humankind civilized. To know medicine and its application is not nearly so effective if the practitioner is unaware of what made civilized humankind civilized. Efforts today to eliminate or reduce public spending on the arts is a foolhardy exercise leading to the slow death of a civil society, much like attempting suicide by cutting your arm off one inch at a time. Without public funding there would be no Sistine Chapel, no Taj Mahal, and even no Mount Rushmore. In fact, most of the great art of Western Civilization was funded by public and quasi-public funds.

This is one of the reasons there is such joy taken when a public university undertakes to provide a first-class performance in the arts.

I have watched and listened to the works of Andrew Lloyd Webber for years. For much of what I listened to, I thought very little about who wrote it. It was when I heard the music from the Phantom of the Opera that the man who wrote it was as important as what he had written. And then I saw selections done on television. And then I saw a live production on stage in Tulsa. And then I watched it again on Broadway in New York City.

I was caused to contemplate the genius of the creative mind. He had nothing but a blank piece of paper and a pen. He had the basic idea of a story from a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, but little else. When completed, there was a story with music. There were lyrics to songs and a musical score. It was a captivating story with music which could cross into the popular genre of the time. And not just that time, but it would be relevant for all time. This is the test for a truly successful musical, its music moves comfortably into the pop music culture, lending its songs to a popular contemporary audience.

Can there be a greater song than Think of Me? Can there be a more celebrated character than The Phantom? Can we love anyone more than we love Christine?

The performance at the University lasted nearly three hours. I have trouble sitting for long periods of time. At the intermission, I noticed that there was an empty seat next to my daughter. We traded seats and I was able to stretch my legs into the vacant area next to me. I leaned back, stretched out my legs, and enjoyed “the music of the night.”

Thank you, University of Oklahoma, for making this day possible. It was the day I spent with Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Howard

There was never a time in my earliest years that his life was not a part of mine. Just a month or two younger than me, Howard was my cousin, my best friend, my brother. During those earliest years of my life, it was as if our lives melded together to form one. I loved him as much as one little person could love another, as much as I loved even myself.

His mother and my father were brother and sister. They had come from a dysfunctional family, dysfunctional at best, and, other than their elderly mother, each one was all the other had of that family. There were some relatives, but they had little contact with them. They were each married and they each had four children, all of comparable ages. They each had three boys and a girl. Our families lived near each other in Western Oklahoma during the post-war years of the late 1940s. The brother and sister were both born and raised in Beckham County and they were raising their respective families essentially as they had been raised since that was all they knew.

My parents were farmers, a hardscrabble life then and there, barely a decade removed from the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. Howard’s parents had already given up on farming and they worked for the small dependent school called Hext. It was a very small country school which had only eight grades when Howard and I started the first grade there in 1950. His dad worked as custodian and drove a school bus; his mom was one of two cooks who prepared our lunches.

Most of my preschool memories involve and include Howard. We shared time in each other’s homes. We picnicked together, went to school functions together and had sleep overs. They lived in a small house across the road from the school. It was furnished by the school as part of the compensation package for their services to the school. There were times when we would spend the night at each other’s homes. Three boys in each family, when we spent the night together we usually managed to sleep in one bed, three sleeping at the head of the bed and three at the foot.

A very early memory is documented by an old black and white picture. It is of a picnic in the summer of 1946 or 1947 at the Sayre public park. The old photograph shows Howard and me, together with his older brother, Charles, playing in the wading pool. It shows Howard being his same goofy self and me trying my best to mimic him. It was usually that way. I thought he was the neatest kid I had ever known. What he said was always funny. What he did was always important. Whether we were getting into some mischief or simply walking down the sandy, country road, it was always a joy to be with him. I had two older brothers with whom I was very close, but Howard was special.

We started in the first grade together in 1950 at Hext, that small country school which went to the eighth grade. We were in the first grade in a classroom that housed both the first and second grades, taught by Mr. Berry. She was an adequate teacher for the day, but the memories I have are not of what she taught. They are, instead, memories of recess when Howard and I would play together. We would see how high we could get on the swing set and how hard we could hit the ground on the see-saw, now called teeter-totters. How fast could we run and how much could we tease the girls?

Hext wasn’t just a school, it was a community. There was some organized boxing in the county, so Hext decided to host a boxing tournament. The building had been built around a gymnasium. Built by the WPA, it had two classrooms on either end of the gym, bleachers on one side and stage and restrooms on the other. A boxing ring was set up on the basketball court and there were fights far into the night. Howard and I, both pre-school age, were encouraged to get into the ring and fight. Howard didn’t want to and neither did I. We both adamantly refused to fight for other people’s amusement. The more I think about that, the more outrageous it is that these people wanted us, a couple of four or five year olds, to fight each other.

That first year in school was a glorious year as far as I was concerned. I got to see Howard every day. We sat next to each other in class, went to lunch together, played together during recesses and generally did everything as a single person. I loved him with all my heart.

During our first years of school, Howard’s parents made a major and life-changing decision. They decided to move 150 miles away to Oklahoma City. His father and mine are a study in contrasts in some ways. They were very close. As far as my father was concerned, he never had a brother so this, his brother-in-law, became his brother. They were brothers in every sense of the word. Now, with similar families and children close in age and identical in number, they made different choices for those families. Uncle Glen made a decision that his family would be better off if he moved them to the large city and raised them there. My father made a decision that his family would be better off if he kept them on the farm and associated with a small town environment. Sixty years later, who’s to say which one was right and which one was wrong. Or, was either of them wrong? They both provided for their families in their chosen way and it appears both families flourished.

Howard’s leaving had a heart-breaking effect on me. I moped around the house. Gone were the days when we would run over to the Bowen’s for an evening visit. There was no getting together to make home-made ice cream. No picnics. When school started again, I went into the second grade and Howard’s absence was not lost on me. I was disinterested in school. I wasn’t causing any trouble, I was just there, oblivious of most things around me. Mrs. Berry complained to my mother and was told that I was just having a difficult time adjusting to Howard’s leaving for Oklahoma City. Mrs. Berry had a solution; she yanked me up from my desk and spanked me. I don’t think it had any lasting effect, either positive or negative.

We would see the Bowen family during the year, particularly in the summer. They would come to Erick to see my grandmother from time to time. And, we would go to Oklahoma City to visit them. In those days, it was not an easy thing to make that 150 mile trip. We planned weeks in advance. It was a long drive on those two lane roads and you didn’t run up there just to turn around and come home the same or even the next day. It was always painful to see them leave or for us to do the leaving at the end of one of these visits.

Occasionally, but not often, I would be allowed to spend a week or so with them in Oklahoma City. More often, Howard and his brother, Charles, would be allowed to spend a significant part of the summer with us on the farm. And when they were there they did what we did. If we were chopping cotton, feeding the hogs or milking the cows, they were there. If we went to Vacation Bible School, they were there. And, if we stopped to pick blackberries at my grandparents after VBS, they were there. It wasn’t all work. There was a lot of play. We rode our old horse, Lady, everywhere. We would go to the river and play in the water. We ran all over that farm.

Once when we were visiting them in Oklahoma City, Howard and I were riding a bicycle on a busy street where we probably should not have been. We heard a roar and then saw a plane pass over our head and crash into the back yard of the house next to us. We went back there and saw the plane and the body parts scattered all over the yard. It had hit nose first, coming nearly straight down into the ground so that the wreckage was contained in that single back yard. I remember seeing a torso lying there. Various limbs, also. There was one head that we could see. Two people had been in the plane and it was a gruesome sight for a couple of ten year old kids to see.

It seemed Howard and Charles spent significant amounts of the summer with us each year. They fit in and did whatever we did. We lived on the farm, in a small farm house. Each summer we would move our beds outside. We didn’t have air conditioning and it was cooler outside. Besides, the house was so small the addition of other children pretty well filled it up. But, they seemed to love being there as much as we loved having them. Charles was the first to get a little older and too busy with his own life to continue making these summer visits.

One summer, Uncle Glen and Aunt Laura came to Erick to see her mother who was getting along in years and was in failing health. She would live only a few more years. Howard was with them. By this time, he was their only child young enough to still be going with them places. They spent the weekend there and the day they were going to leave we were working on plans for him to stay a little longer. We had a camping trip planned to go to Colorado. We loved camping in the Rocky Mountains and would spend quite a bit of time on these trips. They were work on Mom and Dad, especially her, but it was something she enjoyed. The change in scenery from the flat lands of Western Oklahoma to the grandeur of the Rockies was always awe inspiring. It was a big deal to get to go to Colorado and spend two or three weeks.

We floated the idea with my parents of Howard’s going with us to Colorado. They didn’t mind at all. We asked his mother and her first reaction was to say no. We continued to try to wear her down and she finally asked Glen what he thought. He wasn’t really a quiet man, except when Laura was around. She did most of the talking for the both of them. Uncle Glen thought about it briefly and then said, “Well, I’ll tell you what I think. If I had a chance to go to Colorado and my mother didn’t let me, I’d probably hate her the rest of my life.” Howard went with us. It turned out to be one of the most enjoyable trips I ever had. I walked familiar trails, explored familiar sights. I did all the things I did every year, but this time it was special. This time Howard was with me.

As we got older, the high school years saw a distance growing between the two of us. Our grandmother died in 1961 and they came back to Erick less often after that. And we were busy so we went to Oklahoma City less often. Howard’s life, like mine, was getting more involved and he didn’t come with them so often. And after we grew up and had our own families, we went years without seeing each other. We finally reached the reality of most families which have allowed distance to grow between them; we saw each other at funerals.

My father was the first to die and Howard and his family, including Aunt Laura and Uncle Glen and all their children, were there to share our grief. Uncle Glen died and it broke our hearts. And then, in 2007, my mother died. Once again, Howard and his family were there. Recently, Aunt Laura’s second husband, Dutch, died. My sister and I went to his funeral. We really didn’t know him, but we did know Aunt Laura. She is the only one left in the family of that generation, the only child of the Depression who remains in the family of William Waldren and Della Poarch. William and Della had two children, Aunt Laura and my dad. She is the only one left. We went to the funeral because that’s what families do, because that’s what my mother would have done had she still been alive.

When I was very young, I had a small picture of Howard who was about six years of age when it was taken. It showed a little boy in blue jeans and a striped T-shirt looking up at the camera. That was a heart-warming picture, just a precious image of a precious little boy. I loved that picture and would have even if I had not loved the little boy. I carried that picture with me far into my adult years. And, then, somewhere in the confusion of my life, it was gone.

I saw Howard at Dutch’s funeral. He was carrying his new little granddaughter, proudly showing her off to me and everyone else. It was a poignant moment filled with pleasure and pride. And in that moment I saw a generational shift in the family. But, I also saw that little boy in the picture, the cousin of my youth. And I was reminded of how I loved him.

The Wind

Where I live, the wind blows. And blows. And blows. And blows. The Great Plains of the American West is a large area consisting primarily of grass lands. The traditional forested area of the Continental United States, the great deciduous forests, was primarily situated east of the Mississippi River, and they play out a relatively short distance west of its western bank. From there to the Rocky Mountains is the area known as the Great Plains.

Large herds of bison, the American buffalo, migrated over these plains, moving where the grazing took them. Infrequent water holes, creeks and rivers imbedded in their genetic memory, they survived the great climatic changes that wiped out so many other giant omnivores. And, they survived the great carnivores which reigned over the continent in prehistoric times. For at least 10,000 years, nomadic people walked these plains, following the bison which they used for food, clothing and shelter. From the Gulf of Mexico to Canada, a vast sea of grass, there were few trees or other natural breaks to prevent the blowing of the wind.

The things that cause the wind are the natural weather patterns. There are other areas on the globe which have windy conditions as well, and they probably have their own unique conditions also. On the Great Plains, the Arctic weather moves unchecked down across the plains in Canada, gains momentum and moves, sometimes with violence, down through the United States. This cold, dry air meets with the warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, the combined form being pushed by the natural flow of weather patterns from the Pacific Northwest to the Atlantic Coast, and when the two weather patterns meet their union can cause violent turbulence which creates the wind.

When my mother was in her late 70s, I, who was at the time in my 50s, asked her when one gets used to the wind around here. Her reply was a simple, “You never get used to it.” She had endured it all those years and, now, so have I. She lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s, a child coming of age in the heart of the Dust Bowl. She had experienced not only the wind, but the wind carrying with it the dirt and dust and topsoil of a multi-state area. One dust storm originating in Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas swept south through Oklahoma and moved from there, curling in an eastward direction, and made it all the way to the Eastern Seaboard. Dust and soil from the Great Plains had traveled over 2,000 miles on that day’s journey.

When she was young, it wasn’t just the wind. It was the wind and the dust, the choking, killing dust. And the constant blowing of the wind had caused more than one person to literally go crazy. I have seen similar dirt storms in the 1950s. They weren’t nearly so bad as what people endured twenty years earlier, but those kids who had endured the winds and the dust of the ‘30s were now the adults, responsible for their own safety and survival and that of their children as well. Remembering the earlier days of devastation, they were frightened at the prospect of a new round of dust bowl days. Schools closed and they sent us home where we weathered the storms the same way our parents had when they were young.

The wind was blowing this week. Thirty miles per hour, it was a balmy day for around here. At forty to fifty miles per hour things were blowing. My son and I were mowing our yard with riding mowers, a dirty job. And, behind our place was an eighty acre field a farmer was plowing with heavy equipment, trying to turn some moist earth up to the top in an effort to hold it and prevent it from blowing away.

Years ago, a friend of mine moved to Oklahoma from Memphis. He told me to never complain about the wind. He claimed the wind cleansed the air. Later, I drove my family from Oklahoma to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. About one hundred miles west of St. Louis, we picked up a smog, the likes of which I had never seen before. We crossed the Mississippi River and the smog stayed with us. It was industrial smog which made breathing difficult. My sinuses burned, my eyes burned and my lungs burned. The sun was blocked from view and the sky was a darkened, ugly gray. There was no wind and the particles in the air hung heavy on us and in us. The haze collected in our lungs. We drove on to Indianapolis where we spent the night. It was difficult to sleep because breathing was labored. The haze followed us to Detroit were we spent a couple of days visiting relatives. As we drove out of Detroit, making our way to the Mackinaw Bridge, we were still under its dark and ominous cast. We finally drove out from under the haze two to three hundred miles north of Detroit. “Don’t ever complain about the wind,” my friend had said, “it cleans the air.”

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr., died on this date forty-three years ago, in 1968. His life was the twin of a movement witnessed by me and my contemporaries, witnessed by myself at first with suspicion and then with acceptance, approval and embrace. And as my own views of the movement evolved, so did my views of the man and mankind.

He was an American Christian clergyman. An incomparable preacher and orator, his cause was justice, first for the African-Americans and then the poor of this country. Social justice was more for him than a mere slogan, it was a cause for which he lived and died. To fully appreciate the work of King, one must be fully aware of the injustices suffered by the African-Americans of his day, both as a social policy of the Federal and State governments and as a result of social behavior neither ordained nor approved by political subdivisions. People now and in succeeding generations should remind themselves of the well-documented plight, the suffering, of African-Americans. Writings of the day, together with cinema and pictures, clearly enlighten us of their plight. Pictures of public lynchings of Black men with smiling, happy and contented onlookers are the ultimate commentary on the discrimination of that era. We assume, as Americans, that we cannot be deprived of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” without due process of law. We assume this, even though it seldom crosses our minds that our “life” can or may be taken from us. African-Americans could not make such assumptions from the day the first slaves were taken from Africa and sold into the New World to the post-World War II era of America. And, this is the ultimate of deprivation of social justice for an entire people. We must keep this portrait in our minds to understand the early works of King for social justice.

His later years would expand his awareness of suffering beyond the Black community, to people suffering from poverty in this, the richest and greatest of all nations. Again, documentary evidence of the poverty of interurban slums and rural disaster areas should give us an understanding of the suffering of the poor in America. He interpreted this as a social injustice every bit as much as discrimination based on race, and our failure to so interpret it today shows how calloused we have become, politically and socially, toward the weakest among us. King held out hope for a better nation and a better people.

Using his skills, knowledge and wisdom as a clergyman, he called for us to act more Christ-like. He looked toward a day when we could and would achieve something akin to a city set on a hill, a light for the world. He looked forward to a new world when people would stop their meanness and mean neglect of others, to a day when the little white child and the little black child would play together, judging each other by the content of their hearts. He looked forward to a day in a new world when we would hurt when we saw people suffering with too little food, clothing or shelter, when we saw sick people suffering for inadequate healthcare. He looked forward to a day when we would no longer walk on the backs of our fellow man and would extend a hand of fellowship and brotherhood to lift him up to stand with us in our fellowship with God.

"I know you are asking today,” he said, “ ‘How long will it take?’

“Somebody's asking, ‘How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?’

“Somebody's asking, ‘When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?’

“Somebody's asking, ‘When will the radiant star of hope be plunged against the nocturnal bosom of this lonely night, plucked from weary souls with chains of fear and the manacles of death? How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?’

“I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because ‘truth crushed to earth will rise again.’

“How long? Not long, because ‘no lie can live forever.’

“How long? Not long, because ‘you shall reap what you sow.’

"How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Israel

Just a little on the heavy side of “middle-aged,” I had occasion to spend the better part of a week attending the wedding of a niece on my wife’s side. We arrived three or four days early because She Who Must be Obeyed had to be involved with her sisters, one of whom was the mother of the bride, in pulling off this affair of the heart. It was a beautiful wedding.

The bride’s aunt, on her father’s side, was there from Chicago with her “significant other.” His name was “Israel.” The mother of the bride and her two sisters were in their element. Each was planning the wedding, the dinner the night before and the reception afterwards. They were planning jointly and severally and were kind enough to include the sister of the father of the bride in their sessions.

The father of the bride had his own assignments which, as most men’s assignments are in a wedding, were seemingly important but essentially meaningless. You can’t ignore the father of the bride, but you don’t have to allow him to have any actual input. The other brother-in-law was something of an artist and a photographer who had some ideas which were helpful to the Three Sisters, not that they would ever acknowledge the suggestions were beneficial—they would simply listen discretely and act on it later when it could appear to be one of their own ideas. And, then, there was me. And, Israel.

We were situated in Southeast Oklahoma and Israel was from Chicago. His culture was different from ours. He was a little older and he probably had some misgivings about this strange group of people from an area we affectionately call “Little Dixie.” Since he and I had no actual purpose for being there, I was given a two-fold assignment: 1) Keep Israel with me, and 2) stay out of the way. It turned out to be a delightful assignment.

Israel, in his 70s at the time, stood about five feet, six or seven inches tall. And, he was about as round as he was tall. He was a jovial little man who spoke with an Eastern European accent. Bald headed, if he had had a white beard he would have made a perfect Santa. Except that he likely didn’t celebrate Christmas. Israel was a Jew.

As far as I could tell, he was a practicing Jew, although he didn’t seem to press issues I might have expected. But, to be fair, I really had little experience of contact with people of Jewish heritage. In the small town in which I was raised, there were two Jewish families. They ran one of the local dry goods stores which was the only place I ever saw them. If they were ever involved in the social structure of Erick, it was somewhere and in some way that our paths would have never crossed. I understood at the time that they went to Synagogue in another town which afforded them an opportunity to associate with their Jewish community.

Israel was a little quiet at first, but he quickly warmed and opened more, revealing himself, his history and life. After a few days, he was comfortable enough to tell me his story. It started on the second day when he asked me if I could tell him about my name. To me, it isn’t anything special. I told him I really didn’t know much about it. He very calmly and humbly asked if I was Jewish. “No,” I replied. “I was named after my father’s best friend who fought in World War II. His name was Hershel Sloan.” I explained that I did not know if the Sloans were Jewish. He asked me if I wanted to know what the name meant. “It means ‘Beloved one of God,’” he said. I had always had a fondness for the name, but only because my father had chosen me to honor his childhood friend. Israel added another dimension.

On the third day he was comfortable enough to tell me his story. He was a youngster in Poland when it was invaded by Germany. He was a captive of the Germans and he and his entire family were taken to a concentration camp. He was about 11 years old when he was taken to Auschwitz where he was kept until the liberation near the end of the war in 1945. He told of the hardships, the cold, the hunger and the labor. Never complaining about his lot, he told his story in a matter-of-fact manner. There were no tears as he told the story, as the tears were all shed years earlier. And then one day, a group of Jews were rounded up to be taken to another place to work. As he and his other family members were standing in line to go to the new location, his mother told him to go back in the barracks and get his coat, or what passed for a coat. When he returned to the barracks the people inside didn’t allow him to leave. He tried to get back to his family but they forcibly retained him until the group was dispatched. Of course, they were not going to another work location, they were going to the “showers” (gas chambers) and the crematoriums. He never saw them again.

Israel showed me the numbers tattooed on the inside of his arm, just above the wrist. He looked quietly at them, telling the story of his liberation and his coming to America. He told me of his marriage, his children and his business life. These were all important to him, but he spoke poignantly of that period in his young life when he was a captive in a concentration camp because he was a Jew.

We spent hours driving throughout Southeastern Oklahoma looking at the scenery, which is unusually beautiful for that time of year. We attended the wedding and then the reception. The bride and groom had provided to have a karaoke at the reception and we all took turns singing. I asked the D.J. if he had “Sunrise, Sunset” from Fiddler on the Roof. He had it and I invited Israel to join me. There we were, two fat, bald-headed men, one short and one taller, one old and one older, singing to the bride.

Is this the little girl I carried?

Is this the little boy at play?

I don't remember growing older

When did they?

When did she get to be a beauty?

When did he grow to be so tall?

Wasn't it yesterday

When they were small?

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly flow the days

Seedlings turn overnight to sunflowers

Blossoming even as we gaze

Sunrise, sunset

Sunrise, sunset

Swiftly fly the years

One season following another

Laden with happiness and tears

Israel departed the next day and headed back home to Chicago. His health was failing but he had hidden it well for those celebrations. I corresponded with him a couple of times and wanted to go see him. But, like so many people, perhaps most, I put it off, waiting for a more convenient time. Finally, I heard that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s and shortly thereafter heard that it had taken a very grave turn. Quickly he had become stricken with that damnable disease and he got to where he did not even know his own children. It broke my heart to hear that. And I regretted that I had not gone to see him.

I would soon learn that he was departed from this life. I regret that I did not get to know Israel better; that I did not have an opportunity to spend more time with him. And, that I had not taken advantage of the time I did have. I wish I had asked him if it would have been appropriate to have his numbers tattooed on my arm in his honor. I haven’t done that. I simply don’t know if it would be appropriate.