Category Archives: Remembering

Forty Years Ago Tonight: Where Were You When President Nixon Resigned?

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OK, so you need to be at least as old as me, and probably older to answer this question. As for me (I was 14), my family was on vacation in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. That afternoon my father told me that President Nixon was going to speak on national television.

I had known that the noose was closing on him and I believed that he was guilty of a cover up. I asked my father if Nixon was going to resign and he said it’s hard to believe that he asked for time on national TV to do anything else. I was swimming in the hotel pool when my father peeked his head out the door and told me he was coming on TV. I got out of the pool and wrapped a towel around my shoulders; I went into the hotel room, watched him resign, and went back into the pool. The next morning I saw the headline in the New York Daily News.

Because I grew up in northern Virginia and started reading the Washington Post from the time I could read, I had a front row seat on the Watergate scandal. I know way more than anyone should about it, but I’m amazed at how badly President Nixon handled this.

On June 17, 1972 five men were caught and arrested in the Watergate office complex, more specifically, the offices of the Democratic National Headquarters. Almost everyone believes that President Nixon knew nothing about it and was caught off guard when he got word.

It was silly on several levels. President Nixon was running for re-election against Senator George McGovern and was expected to soundly defeat him (which he did). The burglars were looking for information that the McGovern campaign had on Nixon, but if they did have anything, it would have been at McGovern headquarters, not the DNC offices.

In any case President Nixon saw the arrests as an attack on him and ordered his staff to pay the burglars to make sure they didn’t testify in their trial that they had been ordered by anyone to do this. Over the next 2 years it all unraveled. We learned that while President Nixon didn’t order the break in, he tried to cover it up. We call that obstruction of justice.

Forty years ago today he was facing the real possibility that he would be impeached and removed from office. In a decision that I supported then (and now) he chose to resign, fearing that an impeachment and trial would divide the nation. The next day Gerald Ford took the oath of office and became the next President. In another decision I agreed with, President Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. It may have cost him his re election in 1976 but I think he did the right thing.

In the last 40 years I’ve come to recognize the strength of our nation. Not many nations could survive the voluntary resignation of a sitting President and the orderly transition of power to another without the fear of a military takeover. Watergate gave us an unprecedented Constitutional crisis but the next day the government opened for business and did well. Its employees showed up for work just like every other day. The national parks open for business, Social Security checks were processed and mailed, and everything was worked like it should.

August 7, 1974 was a bad day for many reasons, but a good day for the confidence we all should feel in our government.

Tony Gwynn: 1960 – 2014

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Monday we received sad news (though news many of us in San Diego knew was coming): Tony Gwynn died of cancer of the salivary glands at the age of 54.

This was sad news on several levels. He was much too young. We who love San Diego, baseball, or just loved watching a man who respected the game, his family, and himself with equal ferocity, will miss him.

He was a Los Angeles boy he grew up rooting for the Dodgers. After high school he came to San Diego State University where he played basketball and baseball. In 1981 he was drafted by the San Diego Padres in the 3rd round. After a year in the minor leagues he made his major league debut with the Padres on July 19, 1982. He never left. Even though he could have made much more money by moving to another team when he became a free agent, he decided to stay in San Diego.

From 1982 to his retirement at the end of the 2001 season he put up some incredible numbers. His career batting average was .338, with 3,141 hits (it’s assumed anyone with 3,000 career hits gets into the Baseball Hall of Fame). He made the All Star team 15 times and was the National League batting champion 8 times.

But the best thing about Tony was his character. He never stopped studying the game, even drawing the respect of the often prickly Ted Williams.

After his career he continued to contribute to the game coaching the SDSU baseball team. We knew things were bad in March when he asked for a leave of absence.

I had the pleasure to meet him several years ago at a charity event. We just spoke for a minute, but he made me feel like I was the only person in the room. You can read my account of that meeting here. Though he and his wife were the keynote speakers, they carried themselves with the kind of class I’d always heard about.

One final note: He was inducted in the Hall of Fame in 2007. A few months after that San Diego experienced a fire that destroyed dozens of homes. Tony put the word out that if anyone lost an autograph of his (from a picture to a baseball to a bat) in the fire, they should let him know and the would replace them. As an added bonus, he could put “HOF” on the autograph (Hall of Fame). The fire came close to his home and his showed his character in that he was concerned so much with the fans.

He was Mr. Padres and we will miss him.

God Bless Tony, and I’m glad you’ll be reunited with your father.

D Day Plus 70 Years. A Day To Remember

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The airwaves have been filled today with remembrances of June 6, 1944. These anniversaries are becoming more poignant as the number of those who were there are dwindling. It won’t be many years before we lose our last survivor.

The numbers are staggering. By early 1944 it was clear that the allies would need to make an amphibious landing on the shores of France, but it was not clear where or when. Adolf Hitler believed it would be at Calais, the narrowest part of the English Channel. He was wrong. Around 6:30 a.m. that morning, allied troops began landing on Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword Beaches, south of Calais.

On that day 160,000 troops landed and began an inch by inch conquest of France. About 9,000 died on those beaches. We should never forget that.

D Day is also a reminder that landmark events sometimes turn on small, bizarre decisions. Hitler’s personal doctor, Theodore Morell, regularly injected Hitler with something he called “Vitamultin.” There is good reason to believe that one of the ingredients was amphetamines. On the night of June 5th, Hitler left instructions not to wake him. When reports began to come in about the invasion, Hitler was not awakened. When he finally did wake up, he believed the invasion was a trick and the real invasion was going to be at Calais. He refused to move troops to the invasion, and this eventually made the allied victory happen.

A few years ago I met a man who was part of the invasion. He told me that he was transferred to England with the understanding that he would be part of the invasion. During the day he drilled and prepared for the invasion. At night he was housed with an English family. They were not thrilled to house an American: all they knew about America was what they saw in movies about organized crime in Chicago in the 1920s. His room had only a bed; the rest of the room had been stripped of everything else. The good news is that as they got to know him, they recognized that this American was a good guy. He got home one day and found his room had the bed, and also a dresser and art on the wall. He was pleased to have dispelled their prejudice.

On the night of June 5th he remembered boarding the transport ship. He told me that some of the troops prayed the rosary. Others played cards. They were all scared.

The invasion was horrible. The sea was red with blood and the sand was littered with bodies. But he survived. Eventually the war ended because D Day achieved its purpose: it started with a beachhead and ended with the liberation of France and Germany.

My thanks to him and all those who spent the night of June 5th wondering if they would live another day.

Boston Strong? You Betcha!

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I’m writing this on the evening of April 15, 2014. Last year at this time we were looking with horror at the Boston Marathon bombing. If you’ve never lived in Boston it’s hard to imagine how much the marathon means. Trust me, it’s a big deal.

And it was made even harder to see that two cowardly terrorists used this iconic event to spread terror. In the blink of an eye we lost Richard Martin, Krystle Campbell, Lingzi Lu, and Sean Collier. Officer Collier died a few days later, but he was every much a victim of the marathon as the others.

Of the terrorists, one is dead and the other is in custody. The justice system will deal with him, and I know the good people of Boston will do the right thing.

In the meantime the city moves on. The courage Boston showed 240 years ago when they formed the Sons of Liberty has been present over the last year.

Next week they will run the marathon again. Our prayers will be with all of them.

Benedict XVI: Thank You, One Year Later

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One year ago today, Pope Benedict XVI announced he would resign as Pope, something that hadn’t happened in centuries.

It was a courageous act. His health had suffered greatly during his papacy and he felt that he could no longer adequately serve the church.

I was the exception: almost everyone I knew thought the conclave would elect a pope who would lead with the same agendas as Benedict and Blessed John Paul II. They saw a church that would continue to see purity of orthodoxy over the inclusion that Jesus sought. A church that saw itself as under siege by forces that wanted its destruction. They thought this because all 115 of the Cardinals in the conclave were appointed by either John Paul or Benedict.

I gave more credit to the Holy Spirit. I was reminded that Blessed John XXVIII was appointed Cardinal by Pius XII. He came out of nowhere and made more progress in the 20th Century than anyone expected. I prayed for another successor like John.

On March 13th we learned of the election of someone we’d never heard of: Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. We learned that he is of Italian descent, but was from Argentina. We learned quickly that change was in the wind. A Jesuit, he chose (for the first time) to be called the name of St. Francis, a medieval saint who embraced poverty as a way of holiness. Then he took the bus back to his hotel and paid the bill.

In the 11 months since his election many of us liberal Catholics have rejoiced in him. He is humble, kind, and loving. Maybe we should take this for granted in a Pope, but it’s been a long time since we’ve been able to.

The Justice Chronicles Volume 13: Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)

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His death was supposed to be a footnote. It was supposed to be a local story, buried in the inside pages of the paper: Imprisoned Terrorist Nelson Mandela dies in Prison.

It didn’t happen that way. In the days since his death he has made worldwide headlines. Frankly, it was time. He was 95 years old and had been in critical condition since developing a lung infection nearly 6 months ago. He was home but his home was transformed into an intensive care unit.

Mr. Mandela’s life story is largely public and known. After becoming a lawyer in apartheid South Africa he joined the African National Congress. He first embraced the idea of nonviolence in battling apartheid, but later abandoned that and co founded a militant wing called Spear of the Nation. Because of his actions he needed to go underground, but was found and arrested in 1962. Tried and convicted of trying to overthrow the government, he expected to be sentenced to death but instead was sentenced to life in prison.

For the next 27 years he languished in prison. By the 1970s and 1980s he became the public face of the injustice of apartheid, even though there were no pictures taken of him since 1963. His release from prison in 1990 seemed a miracle.

But for me, his release wasn’t the miracle. It’s what happened to him while in prison and how he sculpted post apartheid South Africa. While nobody knew in 1990 how he would spend the rest of his life, many feared he would take the opportunity to exact revenge on those who harmed him. They feared he would respond to injustice with injustice of his own.

He didn’t. After his election as President of South Africa in 1994 he founded the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. He knew that truth must come before reconciliation, and that reconciliation is the only path to true peace. As I think about this, I can’t help but remember Archbishop Tutu’s belief about forgiveness:

Forgiving is not forgetting; its actually remembering–remembering and not using your right to hit back. Its a second chance for a new beginning. And the remembering part is particularly important. Especially if you don’t want to repeat what happened.

His time in prison changed him from someone who advocated violent resistance to someone who saw that revenge only continues the cycle of violence. He loved his nation and that love healed him of his anger toward his captors.

We are all better for it. Much like Gandhi and Martin Luther King before him, he taught us the ferocious power of love and forgiveness. I’m grateful that Mr. Mandela is the only one of the three to not die violently.

For those of us who live on, our mandate is clear: we are called not only to stop tolerating injustice, we are called to forgive those who benefited from it. Once those who create or benefit from injustice are defeated, we must not exact revenge on them. Their sin must be called out, but they must be forgiven. Only then will there be peace.

San Diego Hospice: 1977 – 2013

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On February 14, 1977 San Diego Hospice opened its doors to care for people with terminal illnesses. On February 13, 2013 we announced we were closing our doors forever.

I say “we” because since February 14, 2005 I have been an employee of San Diego Hospice.

So what happened? That’s a good question and I’m not sure we’ll ever completely know the answer. Perhaps it was Medicare who claims we were treating people who were not terminally ill. Or a disgruntled ex-employee who claimed to warn us of this but was fired for her efforts. Or mismanagement at the highest levels.

Or maybe it was a combination of all of these. On some level it doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that we are shutting our doors and asking our patients and employees to look elsewhere.

It’s been a hard road. For those of us on ground level (the ones with boots on the ground) we’ve done extraordinary work. We’ve come into peoples’ lives (and homes) and brought order to chaos, hope to despair, and calm to panic. We’ve taught people to die with dignity and we’ve taught caregivers to be miracle workers. We’ve shown countless people that while death is inevitable, suffering is not. Pain is not. Despair is not. I’ve cared for patients from age 3 days to 102 years and I’ve shown them – all of them – that their lives have meaning and their deaths have value.

Now we have to show that as an organization we can die with dignity. We are feeling our patients’ feelings and experiencing their experiences. The uncertainty, the bewilderment, the fear.

In 1950, while accepting his Nobel Prize, William Faulkner said this:

I believe that [we] will not merely endure: [we] will prevail.

He wrote this in the shadow of the Cold War where the United States and the Soviet Union were both building weapons of global destruction, but they speak to us on this day.

Hospice will prevail. Palliative medicine will prevail. Death with dignity will prevail.

Most importantly the smart, dedicated, committed and imaginative geniuses I work with will prevail.

When I am on hospice (hopefully decades from now) I will benefit from the work that was done at this place, in this time, with these people.

Happy Birthday Memere

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For the uninitiated, “Memere” is the word my family uses for grandmother. My father’s mother, who died in 1988, was born 125 years ago today in Richibucto, New Brunswick, Canada. The area was beautiful but economically poor and as a young woman she emmigrated to Garder, Massachusetts where she spent the rest of her life. She got a job as a chambermaid at the Colonial Hotel, met a bellhop, and they married in 1918. They raised 2 daughters and 5 sons. Of the sons, 4 of them served in uniform in either World War II or Korea, or both.

I’m thinking of this against the background of the recent Supreme Court decision in the case of Arizona vs. United States. Almost everyone agrees that our immigration policy is a mess, but the battle of the soundbites is clearly being won by the anti immigration nutcases. Their argument begins and ends with the phrase: “What part of illegal don’t you understand?” The funny thing is that most of us are here because our ancestors came here from other countries.

The nutcases argue that our ancestors came legally and that makes all the difference. They argue that those who are current undocumented workers didn’t take the legal path. They, in a sense, cut in line. Well these are silly arguments. When my grandmother came to the US around 1915 there were no laws governing immigration from Canada. If you could get here (and were white) you could stay: you could find a place to live, get a job, meet someone, and begin the process of becoming an American. That didn’t change until 1921 and the Emergency Quota Act set limits on how many people could come here. Since then anyone who wants to come here has to compete for a spot. Frankly, if you’re an engineer from Bangalore (and Qualcomm wants to hire you) there is a line for you to get in. If you’re a farmworker from Mexico (or a chambermaid from Canada), there is no line. You can’t “cut in line” because there is no line to cut in.

I’m grateful my grandmother had the good fortune of coming here before her skills were evaluated and ranked. Her children were part of the generation who lifted the country out of the Great Depression and fought a world war that ensured a happy ending for the 20th Century.

When I look at men and women who are this generation’s immigrants I see my grandmother. Regardless of their legal status.

So should you.

Now COPD is personal

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As I write this my father is in Fairfax Hospital and I’m asking for prayers from everyone who reads this.

He’s been feeling badly for the last few weeks; he’s been diagnosed with COPD. This isn’t much of a surprise as he smoked a pack and half of cigarettes for about 40 years and the cough he developed earlier this month was thought to be a common cold.

Having a cough is more an irritant than anything else but he also developed swelling (edema) in his abdomen and left leg. The good news is that a doppler test (developed by my friend Lori’s father George Leopold) ruled out a blot clot.

The bad news is that he was having a hard time speaking and we didn’t know why. The hospital called at 3AM and told him to go to the Emergency Room. His sodium level was low (111) and we think it’s a bad combination of his hypertension medication Linisopril and Hydrochlorothiazide. That explained why he was so sluggish. The Lisinopril is a good idea but having Hydrochlorothiazide wasn’t. It’s a diuretic which is normally a good idea for hypertension but it lowers both potassium and sodium which messes with heartbeat. The doctors have changed the medication to stop the diuretic and we all hope it’s the beginning of good news.

I pray it is. My father is a good man, but he doesn’t enjoy being a patient; it’s hard for him to ask for help or be the center of attention. It will be good news for everyone when he gets to go home and I pray and hope he comes home soon to my mother (who he has been married to for nearly 54 years). They belong together.

I love them more than I can say.