Tomorrow Is A New Beginning

 

I will be watching television most of the day tomorrow. The first inauguration that I remember watching was for President John Kennedy. The first televised inauguration was for Harry Truman in 1949. My family did not have a television until 1952 so I may have seen the event in 1953 and 1957. I can’t remember why I was at home that morning in January 1961, but I do vividly remember an elderly Robert Frost struggling to read a poem that he had recently written for the event. The sun was so bright on that frigid January day that Frost could not read the poem that he had written. I remember feeling very nervous watching this grand old man struggle to play his part. 

 

A few years ago I learned that Frost was thinking on his feet and when he could not read the new poem he quoted an older poem that fit the moment. Kennedy had invited Frost to participate in the inauguration because Frost had been an early supporter of his candidacy. Here is part of the story as recently told by Tim Ott on the website Biography. Pardon the lengthy quote but it is an inspiring story from a time of great hope and expectation.

 

Following his narrow victory over Richard Nixon in November 1960, Kennedy extended an offer to have Frost become the first poet to read at a presidential inauguration.

Replying by telegraph, Frost wrote, “If you can bear at your age the honor of being made president of the United States, I ought to be able at my age to bear the honor of taking some part in your inauguration. I may not be equal to it but I can accept it for my cause – the arts, poetry, now for the first time taken into the affairs of statesmen.”

Kennedy then asked Frost if he could compose a new poem for the ceremony. When that was rejected, the president-elect requested a reading of “The Gift Outright,” an ode to American exceptionalism first published in 1942 and described by its author as “a history of the United States in a dozen [actually, 16] lines of blank verse.”

Kennedy had one more request, to change the final line about our great nation, “Such as she was, such as she would become,” to the more optimistic “such as she will become.” Although not typically inclined to tweak his careful wording, the poet grudgingly agreed.

Despite his earlier refusal, Frost found himself inspired by the occasion and set about composing a new work. Titled “Dedication,” the poem sounded many of the same patriotic notes as “A Gift Outright,” only with explicit references to contemporary events (“The greatest vote a people ever cast, / So close yet sure to be abided by”).

On the morning of the inauguration, January 20, 1961, Frost presented the poem to incoming Secretary of the Interior Stewart L. Udall in his hotel room. Pleasantly surprised, Udall had a new copy typed up before whisking Frost off to the ceremony with the poet intending to read “Dedication” as a preamble to “The Gift Outright.”

The inauguration unfolded on a sunny but bitterly cold day at the U.S. Capitol. Approximately one hour in, Frost made his way to the podium and began reading “Dedication,” but soon stopped: the sun’s glare, reflecting off the snowy ground, was far too bright for a pair of 86-year-old eyes.

Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson tried to block the sun with his hat, but Frost abandoned the effort altogether and began reciting “The Gift Outright” from memory.

Heeding Kennedy’s request, he closed the short poem with his own added emphasis: “Such as she was, such as she would become, has become, and I – and for this occasion let me change that to – what she will become.”

The audience roared with approval, seemingly not noticing the poet thanking the “president-elect, Mr. John Finley.”

The following day, The Washington Post cited the reading as one of the highlights of the ceremony, noting, “Robert Frost in his natural way stole the hearts of the inaugural crowd.”

Indeed, although Frost was reportedly embarrassed by the turn of events, it became a triumphant capstone to his career, an unscripted moment that memorialized his association with an iconic president at the dawn of a new chapter in American history.

 

I thought of the elderly Frost and the very young president when I heard that Joe Biden, the oldest person to be elected president, had invited 22-year-old Amanda Gordon, our first Youth Poet Laureate, to present a new poem at his inauguration. There have been other memorable moments on Inauguration Day. Another high point for me was in 1977 when Jimmy Carter, his wife Roselyn, and their young daughter Amy exited the presidential limo and joined the parade waving to the crowd as they walked down Pennsylvania Avenue. Perhaps it was the high point of Jimmy Carter’s four years in the White House. Every president since has exited the limo for at least a few minutes of walking and waving. I wonder if that will be true this year. I seriously doubt that Donald Trump will steal the recognition that Jimmy Carter has earned as our best former president.

 

The low point of all of “my inauguration memories” was Donald Trump’s inaugural speech. I shuddered when he started talking about “American carnage” and “draining the swamp.” I cringed with my negative expectations of things to come when I heard those words. As awful as his words were, there was no way that day that I could have imagined what a tiresome and tedious four years it would be, nor would I have been able to imagine the desecration of the Capitol and constitutional crisis that would occur at the end of our sad journey with him. 

 

This year’s inauguration is already unique and not because of the age of the president-elect or the youth of the poet who will inspire us. The header in today’s post shows an inauguration site behind high fences and surrounded by 20,000 members of the National Guard. Unlike 2017 there will be no debate about the size of the crowd. The concern will not be crowd control. The concern is avoiding some catastrophic interruption of the ceremony designed to throw our democracy into a downward spiral toward some modern iteration of a civil war. 

 

I am sure that Joe Biden’s speech will attempt to offer us hope and a road to reconciliation. I want to hear him tell us once again about how we are going to “Build Back Better.” The speech will probably be a mix of reassurance that things will soon be better, and the assertion that our greatness is indeed redeemable if we rediscover respect for one another and the world we share, as we accept once again our responsibility to all humans and resume our leadership of the free world. We will probably be given a 40,000-foot overview of the policy proposals that will support those goals. I expect that he will outline the challenges ahead and affirm his willingness to reach across the aisle to pass laws that will provide relief from the pandemic and begin to repair the damage it has done to our economy. I would be surprised if he does not express a profound sense of loss for the 400,000 people who have died from COVID and genuine empathy for the families of COVID’s victims while honoring the millions of essential workers who have mitigated our losses. I am almost certain the newly inaugurated president will mention the unbalanced impact of the pandemic on members of minorities who are dually and differentially harmed by their employment in essential roles and their lack of access to adequate care. He is likely to commit his administration to the pursuit of universal access to health care. I am sure that he will promise to restore America to its leadership role in the global efforts to curb the warming of the planet from carbon-based fuels that are the greatest threat to life as we have known it. I am also sure that he will not express hostility toward people who voted against him. We will watch the august ceremony with our fingers crossed and offering prayers for the safety of the small crowd of socially distanced observers of this most significant ceremony of our democracy, the taking of pledges to preserve the Constitution and the system of government that it describes.  

 

1960 was a pivotal year for me that in retrospect culminated in the inauguration of JFK on that very cold January day. In 1960, I was a fifteen-year-old tenth grader who was beginning to question the validity of some of his parents’ opinions. Earlier that year my father had gotten some mention in the national press by preaching that a Roman Catholic should not be elected president because his first allegiance would be to the Pope in Rome. My Dad was not the only minister to hold that opinion. Kennedy faced that question head-on with a famous meeting in Houston with evangelical ministers. I had kept my political opinions to myself around the family dinner table, but Kennedy’s election was a little victory for me as well. My candidate won. His candidate lost. My dad and I stayed on opposite ends of the political spectrum for the next 58 years until he died in 2018–two months short of his 98th birthday.

 

Despite my father’s opposition to Kennedy, I remember how upset my father was when he learned that Kennedy had been assassinated. I never remember him questioning the results of an election or the validity of the occupant of the Oval Office. He respected the office and he felt obligated to accept the results of elections. In the remaining 50 plus years of his ministry, I never again heard him raise a political concern in a sermon. He never denigrated me for seeing the world through a different political lens. The same was true for our theological differences. My relationship with my father suggests to me that it is possible for honorable people to work together in love and harmony even when they have opposing political opinions. The key to peaceful coexistence is not dominance, it is mutual respect and the honoring of a shared overarching objective. I am certain that my relationship with my father was enabled, and not diminished by the fact that we had differing opinions about many things, but the feelings that flowed from our differences were mitigated by the fact that we shared respect for the opinions of the other person. I will not give up the hope that we can come together across this land with a great sense of renewal if we would just begin to name the things on the long list of values and hopes that we share.

 

I read in the papers that a majority of Republicans believe Donald Trump’s claim that the election was stolen. I sincerely hope that is “fake news.” I will accept that 80% of Republicans are very upset that Donald Trump didn’t win, but I must believe that the majority of those who did not vote for Joe Biden would have the same perspective on the election that my father would have probably had. His candidate did not always win, but the man who did win was his president and he had the continuing right to point out the mistakes the president was making until he had a chance to vote against him in the next election. The office deserved respect even if he disagreed with the occupant. Fortunately, during most of his long life, the presidents from both parties also respected the office. Even Richard Nixon respected the office and was willing to leave it when his crimes were exposed. This time around the thing I worry most about is some disruptive final act that Mr. Trump might offer us as he flies off to Mar-a-Lago. 

 

I am delighted to hear that Joe Biden will begin his presidency by signing a raft of executive orders. I hope to be writing in the near future about the executive orders that will initiate the next push toward the realization of quality care that supports the Triple Aim, resolution of the many economic and social inequities that create healthcare disparities, and an emphasis on public health that will protect us from future pandemics. 

 

I have great expectations for Joe and Kamala but my hope for this week is that Wednesday will be a boring day of poems and speeches. I hope that Thursday’s headlines will be all about what did not happen. It would be great to see pictures of troops heading home and fences coming down.