"Disillusioned- A Searching Collab"
July 6, 2001, 9:26 p.m.

Searching Collab project for July, 2001

This month's topic: Disillusioned.
It can be disillusionment with anything you once respected or admired or really really liked. Anything that left you profoundly disappointed.

I had several heroes when I was a child. Real people that I admired and looked up to.

One was John Glenn, the american astronaut, the first american in space. Another was Loretta Young, the actress who had her own television show. Yet another was my Uncle Irv - he was a fireman.

Most of all though, if you would have asked me then who my biggest hero was, I would have replied that it was John F. Kennedy, President of the United States of America. He was my hero - because he was the President.

It was tragic when he was killed. He was assasinated and I knew the country lost a great President. It is a tragedy I will always remember each an every year, because President Kennedy was assasinated on November 22nd, my birthday.

I was disillusioned by the fact that President Kennedy was actually assasinated. It was hard to believe that there was someone in the world who wanted to kill our beloved President. I could not believe what had happened. And in my young mind, I resented the fact that someone would actually kill the President on my birthday!

My greater disillusionment, however, came later.

After President Kennedy was killed, Lyndon B. Johnson became the President of the United States. He was an older man and certainly not as handsome as President Kennedy, but I accepted him because he was, after all, the President and had been the Vice President under Kennedy. I accepted him because he reminded me of my Uncle Dick, from Texas. The following year, he was re-elected on his own, to the presidency.

Then a few years into his term, all the shouting began, or rather, that's when I began to hear all the shouting.

It seemed everyone was shouting.

It seemed everyone was angry.

They were angry about some little place on the other side of the world that I had never even heard of before.

A place called Vietnam.

People were cursing at the President and people were cursing at each other. Students at the Universities shouted the loudest.

Students died.

American soldiers died.

Vietnamese people died.

People were being killed and I was afraid.

And the rioting started up in the streets and I was afraid.

And the race riots began.

All I could understand was the constant stream of hatred and the number of deaths which were plainly delivered on the news every night.

It was a difficult thing to experience the variety of anger that every city in America felt and lived with during those times.

I didn't understand it all. And it seemed to go on for such a very long time. All I hoped for was that it would be over before my brother was old enough to be drafted or old enough to go to college. In either case, I was afraid for him. I was afraid for all of us.

I had reached a point in my life where the President was no longer my hero.

It seemed that something in America no longer loved it's heroes. They had killed Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. too. I watched it all unfold on the news.

And President Johnson seemed to do nothing to help America. How could he let this happen?

Then, when Johnson's term was up, he withdrew from the race in the middle of re-election.

So America elected another man. A man who promised a brighter, stronger future, a man who promised Peace and renewal of the American spirit.

America elected Richard M. Nixon.

And I hoped this man would be my new hero. I hoped he would heal the hatred. I hoped he would restore the dignity and honor of the Presidency.

I should have known better but I was young and I had high hopes.

I've learned that for me, the President is only a man doing a high paid job, paid for by the people but elected by the politicians. He's not a hero. America only wants us to think he is.

 

Peace.