I was fifteen years old. It was a sunny November day. It was cold in our neck of the woods in Marion, NC. I was wearing a new jacket mom had bought me. I was sitting at the back of my freshman English class that day, listening to Mrs. Martinot drone on about run-on sentences or something. My head was in the clouds. I had a part time job helping James Dodson with his roofing business, but we were shut down for the winter, and so I had my afternoons all to myself. I was thinking I might take Sammy--my springer spaniel puppy--out in the woods surrounding our farm and hunt.
Suddenly, just after lunch, the principal came into the room and whispered something into Mrs. Martinot's ear. She immediately burst into tears and left the room. I will never be able to remove that image from my mind. Mrs. Martinot, teacher, mother, wife, the best teacher I ever had. I'd never seen her lose her temper. Never seen her get emotional at all.
Until now. November 22, 1963. That date is burned into my memory, and I will never forget how my stomach sank as Principal Davis stepped in front of us and shuffled his feet and glanced around the room, unsure how to begin.
"Guys, we've just got word that President John Kennedy has been shot in Texas."
I'll never forget the gasp that rippled through the class. I glanced over at my buddy Clark and saw tears welling in his eyes. I felt like crying too. My stomach felt torn in knots and my feet were clammy. But somehow I managed to maintain clarity. I saw the world more clear than at any other time.
I'd never been political. But this was the moment that rocked me to my core. The moment that led me from an awkward teenager to a die-hard political radical.
These are the moments that change our lives. Through death, through life, these are the moments that change our lives, our minds, our hearts, even the very soul of our society.
These are the moments that rock us to our knees.
I was twenty years old in 1968. I hated and loved Johnson. I hated segregationists, and wound up in several bar fights, arrested for fighting, engaging in protests, and for being a white on the side of civil rights.
I was twenty and was going to college and smoking pot. Then one early day in June I awoke, mowed the lawn, tended to the sweet potatoes in my family's garden, and wondered where my dog Sammy was. I called for her all morning, but no sign of her. I went out into the woods and finally found her writhing in between a barbwire fence our neighbor had put around his corn. Sammy had probably spied a mole making his way underground from one side of the fence to the other, and had went after it. She died in my arms, writhing under the sharp barbs of the fence.
I buried her that day, and got drunk that night, and went to sleep. I dreamed of her, throwing her Frisbee on the beach.
I awoke to my mother screaming that I needed to get downstairs now. I shuffled downstairs and awoke that day to the news that my hero Robert Kennedy had been shot down in California.
My world bled away. My knees became weak.
These are the moments that make us. These are the moments that break us. These are the moments that define who we are, and differentiate from who we need to become.
I saw a President resign for malfeasance. I saw civil rights passed. I married a woman and had two wonderful children with her. I witnessed her break down in depression. I witnessed our divorce, her suicide attempt, her getting well, and finally her broken down again with cancer.
I saw buildings fall under terrorism, both foreign AND domestic. I was there to see Waco, Oklahoma city, Ruby Ridge. I was watching when Iranians took American hostages, and I watched as we traded them for weapons.
On a cool September morning, I was hard at work, making my rounds along my linen route, the man that these events, as well as my own personal strength, had made me.
I stood in the lobby of an empty Olive Garden and stood aghast as the employees were fixed on the television. A television that was showing two skyscrapers burning in the morning light, smoke engulfing the city sky of New York.
My stomach sank, just as it had on that November afternoon in 1963. My knees were weak, and I needed a moment.
Moments.
These are the moments that change our lives. The moments that make us Americans. The moments that take us from where we are to where we are going. These are the moments that define us not only as individuals, but as a nation.
Shock and awe followed. Both as a nation and as a policy. I watched as we were plunged into war once more. Many men, women, and children died.
Years of war and a bad economy passed, and I learned I had COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder) from years of smoking.
These are the moments.
After years of fighting for civil rights, after years of witnessing the most disgusting acts of racism imaginable, I watched this country elect the first black President.
These are the moments that change our lives.
And one night in early may, after a standard limit of three light beers, I learned that Osama Bin Laden was killed.
These are the moments that define us.
You know what I've learned in all these years, from all these moments that have defined me--us, all of us? That no matter how many chances, how many moments may come in time that offer themselves as opportunities to change, the important thing is that we live with hope.
Thanks all.