Those April showers never came. We are having summer early. The temperature and humidity stay high. It is even reaching the newspapers, radio and TV who keep asking the question, “Is this July or what?” Or as reported in the local paper, “The bellyaching about the heat isn’t suppose to start this soon. It’s just the beginning of May, and already people are muttering about sticky shirts and the furnace that was the family car. There is a reason for it. April in the Tampa Bay area was the fourth warmest on record. Normal high temperatures are about 84 degrees for this time of the year but we’ll be getting low 90’s for the next week or so.” The news has reminded me of an April shortly after we arrived and the temperatures hovered around the 40’s and low 50’s. The complaint raised then was Hey this is Florida we aren’t supposed to have winter weather in April. I suppose since you can’t do a thing about changing the weather that it helps somehow to talk about it. How I don’t know. But even when it is not ‘real Florida’ weather, it is a blessing when compared to the devastation it causes and has caused in other places in the world.
We continue to be surrounded by heavy equipment, piles of dirt, large concrete pipes and boxes. The job goes on and the end is not in sight. We were told that it may be by July or August, but they some smart guy added, yea, right after the snowstorm! We are fighting the lawn dying between their removing most of the sprinkler system and the weather. It appears to be a losing battle. The only small reward is no car traffic is racing up and down Connecticut Avenue. We do have enough noise and dust raising just from the Construction Equipment going back and forth.
Graduations are in the offing. We will be attending Tommy’s, David’s and Sean’s. I have blurs of graduations in the past. I know mine from High School was held in the convention center in Philadelphia. My family did not attend it. They had a wedding that day. My brother John and Patricia Sheehan were married on June 7, 1947. The family had their priorities. When you are the 13th child and seventh son the event of graduating from High School where all have done so is not usually ‘family shaking’. Yet, it was a happy day for me as with all graduations since the work was done and the reward was there. At that point we were looking forward to the next step, to the next school, and in my case an opportunity to avoid being drafted. I was registered but now can’t remember why it wasn’t with Philadelphia’s draft board but with the city of Newburgh, New York, where I would attend college. I know that in June 1947 I had reached my 18th year which was the registration age, but maybe I didn’t need to do it until I was in school. This proved to be a mistake since that small community had less to draw upon in meeting their quota and without a deferment I was off to the army. The deferment stayed with me right on through the four years, the last two of which I spent in St.Joseph’s in Philadelphia. I received another deferment on graduating from there in 1951 since I was accepted at Penn Law School. The deferment there came as the Korean War was being waged and was even more graciously accepted. But the end came in 1954 and I was off to serve. I managed the struggle of officer candidate school and was commissioned an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. My graduation days weren’t over. I had to attend Naval Justice School and once again graduate. So it isn’t any wonder, now that I think about it, that I have no vivid memories of graduations, just that there were a few of them.
The history then passes to my children and now the grandchildren. I recall the first, Suzanne, with a lot more clarity than the next six. I can still see her leaving her place in the Orchestra, as a violinist, and ascending to the stage (I believe again at Convention Hall in Philadelphia) to receive an award, and then another, and then I believe another. It was easy to be the proud Papa on that occasion and with all the rest but the memory of them is not as clear as the number 1. Their graduations became as it did with mine as a quickly passing event. We were more concerned with the ‘next step’. I suppose that is good advice since the job is done we should looking to where the next challenge is and move on.
Education has become such necessary ingredient to a comfortable life that we sometimes seem to forget its real purpose. It was meant to improve the quality of living in more than just a higher paycheck. I note a essay in Atlantic Monthly speaking of how the University is just one more big business these days in competing for students, research grants, and football teams. The word ‘education’ comes from educo or “to lead from”. In Latin the word educator means ‘bringing up’ or a ‘tutor’. But the increase in the availability of a larger paycheck does help in the ‘leading from the’ state of servile labor, etc. The terms and extent of education have lengthened. My father’s generation thought a high school diploma was the ticket to better jobs and living. My Dad and Mom had both done so, and Mom had even moved on to Normal School. A Normal School in those days was a teaching college. My Dad was a grad of Central High a prestigious high school even in 1904. He was able then without entering college to go directly into law school which he did. He failed in his first year something similar to what his son would do later. He told a story of why he returned to the struggle. John Wanamakers Department store then located directly across of City Hall in Philadelphia employed him after is leaving law school. One day he was ordered to go out into south Penn Square, one of those surrounding City Hall, and help unload a truck. He apparently didn’t think that was within his job description and declined. He was advised that he persisted in this failure he would be dismissed. He opted for resigning on the spot. His ego was such that he did not want anyone to see him in such servile capacity as unloading a truck. After all he was a High School graduate and ex-Law student! His employment with John Wanamaker’s ended. When he reported this to his father, he was advised that his attitude indicated he would have difficulty working for someone, so he better go back to Law School and become his own boss. So he did and completed Law School in ’09. I only learned this story long after I myself had a struggle with the first year of law school. I flunked because of .2 or so deficit in the required over all 70 percent average. My mother had been ill and in a coma from the fall of 1951 until her death on November 15,1952. This coupled with a few friends of my father being connected with the school faculty resulted in my being allowed to continue into the second year. I was permitted only after agreeing that at then of that year my total average over all had to be over 70%. I did it. In fact I breeze through the third year and received an award on graduation as the most improved ball player.(It actually read “student”). I was the prime candidate for such an award since I was below the last person in the class as we entered the second year so any improvement had to be the “most”.
Graduations are not just for the young. You read often of a senior citizen, or one nearly such, achieving the goal of obtaining a degree years after most go to school. There was one reported in our local paper of a woman who quit school to work on the farm and now 66 years later at the age of 79 will receive her Bachelor’s Degree. She tells a story of having a son ask her for help in Algebra. It made her decide to go back and get her High School diploma. She graduated at 42 with her 18-year-old daughter. Her name was Ellen Fox. The paper reports, “Fox didn’t enroll in college because it was a stepping stone to $80,000 a year job. She went to enrich herself, she said, and she has realized the power of an education” The power of an education has induced many to persevere and even begin again. It is a power that fuels our natural curiosity to know, to learn to enjoy subjects even more by knowing them better. It is a power most evident in a child and it grows with us as we learn. All of which you know, but it is good to be reminded once in a while. I am not advocating or suggesting that a ‘degree’ indicates one is educated. We all know too many ‘intelligentsia’, a so called educated person, with a string of degrees after their name who are educated beyond their intelligence. In simple English they make no, or little, connection with reality. My spouse and one time learned editor would refer to them as having no ‘common sense’. I endorse the idea I that an “educated man” is one who has learned how to learn and never stops doing so. I like to think I strive for that goal daily.
Presently, I am in the midst of a new educational experience. I am working on what is named a “Call Committee” for the Lutheran Church of the Cross. It is composed of six members named by the Church council. Their first job is to prepare what is termed a “profile”. It is a form created by the Synod to assist them in deciding who might fit as the pastor, leader, of this congregation. It is a 16-page document. It includes history, statistics, opinions as voiced by the congregation, with subjects like Ministry and Structure, Mission in the Community, General Congregation Information and History, etc. It took us from October till January to prepare the document. We then submitted it to the synod. They approved it or it would have been returned. From that they attempt to match a profile of those seeking to be called to a new pastorate. All of this culminates in our interviewing and visiting proposed leaders. I have never had an experience similar to this in my past. It is a new challenge and requires me to call upon skills I am not so sure I possess but pray the Lord will provide. It is a ‘leading from’ my past knowledge, an education in how some churches select their leaders. It does in an odd way remind me of my thoughts while working on a civic association committee to recommend traffic changes in the neighborhood. Our job was to find from the people what they thought ought to be added to the streets to decrease speeding and danger to children. We worked with the Traffic Department of the city and its engineers who gave us ideas that might be applied, like more stop signs, traffic circles, traffic bumps, etc. We came up with a plan for certain streets and then the residents where allowed to vote on their being utilized. After months of work and planning a campaign from some source decided that all the suggested changes should be ignored. It so happened. The people voted them down. Ninety percent of the voters never studied the proposals but we understand a candidate for mayor had let it be known he didn’t want the program carried out. My thoughts then were that after all this work the system in Philadelphia was better. There the traffic engineers in the Traffic Department just installed what they believe will work. The democratic process is ignored and no one seems worse the wear for it. So sometimes I feel the system of pastor selection with congregation’s input should just be ignored and let the bishop name whomever he feels can do the job. No system is perfect and the recent scandal in the Roman Catholic Church shows even Bishops and Cardinals make mistakes. So we want your prayers to get us the man we need. Oro pro nobis!