As a 12 year-old boy I could have cared less about former President Herbert Hoover, but there I was, standing next to my mother on a late October day in 1964 at the old guy's funeral in West Branch, Iowa.
In those far-off days Iowa was not known as a hotbed of politics and it would be another dozen or so years before the infamous Iowa Caucuses would begin to draw some national attention to our quiet rural state.
Consequently, when something as big as a presidential funeral took place my parents made sure I was in attendance "| something about being a witness to history. Born in West Branch, Hoover was, by the middle of his term in 1931, the most-hated man in America. The Great Depression happened on his watch.
An engineer, Hoover also was an intelligent humanitarian, albeit a bit clueless on economics. He may have been as much a victim of timing and luck as of anything else; not wholly unlike another engineer from a small rural town who became president, Jimmy Carter.
Forty-five years ago on one of the rolling hills in the middle of Grant Wood country,
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Hoover was a huge fan of Goldwater and desperately wanted him to beat Johnson. Probably just as well that Hoover wasn't around to witness Goldwater's lopsided loss.
In his speech in July 1964 in San Francisco, Goldwater mentioned the former president fondly, as if an association with Hoover might bring a few votes. Here in Iowa it mattered little. Johnson carried 92 of 99 counties. Memories linger long.
In that same speech, Goldwater said, "Tonight there is violence in our streets, corruption in our highest offices, aimlessness among our youth, anxiety among our elders and there is a virtual despair among many who look beyond material success for the inner meaning of their lives." The same could be said today.
I was reminded of all of this recently while tuned in to the live television coverage of the Boston funeral of Massachusetts Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy. Along the rain-soaked streets of the city, families with children lined up to watch the hearse bearing Kennedy. In addition, the mourners caught glimpses of many of the nation's top government officials as they motored past in the backs of black limousines, the current president, senators, Cabinet members, congressmen.
Late October is upon us, a month of early-sunset nights and corn-harvest days. We've begun the long slog toward winter, that time when nature throws up its hands and cries uncle.
Hoover has been gone 45 years now, Goldwater dead for 20, Kennedy this year, and my mother gone the past 19.
The 12-year-old who cared not a whit about Herbert Hoover is now 57 and, like a recent admission by his childhood hero, baseball player Ernie Banks, he's looking back and thinking he's done nothing important enough to merit the world's attention "... the proverbial unfulfilled life.
Herbert Hoover, Barry Goldwater, Ted Kennedy and even my mother were still making plans when they died. Their work was far from finished. And perhaps that is why we attend these things, and drag our children with us. Whether lining the wet streets of Boston this summer or standing on a green hillside in Iowa 45 years ago, the same history lessons keep coming round.
And in that curious way time has of arcing back and forth from generation to generation it's good to know that our role in history still awaits us, that for some of us there is still time.
Ullrich, a free-lance writer, lives near Maquoketa, Iowa.
