History does not teach as a cookbook that offers pretested recipes. It instructs by analogy not maxims. No academic discipline can remove the burden of difficult choices. This holds true especially for someone whose degrees, expertise and training are in history.
I witnessed burden first hand, though, as I must repeatedly remind everyone it seems, my personal role remained quite negligible. At best, I can attest I shook then President McCallister’s hand, having met him for all of about six minutes. Yes, my “stint” in his White House lasted some nineteen months, four days but that came about quite by accident and passed quickly.
That time, furthermore, does not represent my first exposure to Pennsylvania Avenue. As many know now, I was part of the archaeological team that unearthed the craft. We preferred that term over the oft used “find.” I, for one, have no doubt, given its odd location in the Peiraieus, that those who buried it did not want it found – at least not easily. I still do not completely understand why I was part of Dr. Daniel Jackson’s final team, or why, for that matter, the United States Air Force became involved. I nevertheless assisted in the final report’s presentation to then President Hayes and his panel chaired by Dr. Arthur Nielson, where Dr. Jackson deciphered a new ancient Greek word on the craft: “Raptor.” True, one cannot overstate the significance. As my much more well-known fellow graduate student Harry Jones retorted (once the headlines broke): we can no longer doubt that life here began out there. No, I do not know where the craft went or where it resides now.
Perhaps the question I receive most asks if anything prepared me for the most difficult decisions I made. The short answer? No. Nothing can, really. History, however, I firmly opine, provides an idea, a framework in which one can assess complex circumstances critically. By “history” here, however, I mean one’s personal history. For this tale, I mean my own.
Disclaimers first: my life does not exude exemplary exaltation. I wondered most of it as a boat without a rudder. I was late to graduate high school, late to graduate college, long in pursuing my degrees – did not complete my Ph.D. – did not serve in the military, wasted too many years working in the public sector, then became a tepid business owner. I was dinged with an alcohol related traffic violation, have a failed marriage, was late filing my taxes (twice), and, finally, according to many, never quite matured. I became caught-up, however, in a massive whirlwind.
My friends will attest how often I joke about Hendersonville, Tennessee. The “city by the lake” rests just a scant eighteen miles north of Nashville, had (at the time I think) a population of about 100,000. This ordinary town in a typical State in a regular part of the Country did not proclaim a historical significance, and yet some cosmic force, some planetary alignment, or the gods themselves made this place a key focal point for history altering events.
This, in hindsight, took place long before the scandal that engulfed Governor Gibson, the most popular chief executive in the State’s history (and most certainly would have been a Presidential candidate) – a scandal that began, I can say now, with a cover-up of a petty, but not insignificant crime, which took place at my high school. Of course, in the great scheme of things, it stood as a rather ordinary crime in an unremarkable location during an apparently unimportant time. While many of you all know of this crime, you do not know this crime – as the links running from the curious activities of a teenage gaggle to ITC to the State’s Executive Mansion have never really seen the light-of-day.
Now, to the point: I graduated from Christopher Samuel Hawkins Senior High School, Hendersonville, Tennessee a very long time ago – a school not unknown to many at the time. It made national headlines throughout the country during the extended hostage crisis, the one, which unfolded shortly before I arrived, where a certain James Cole held fifty-two students hostage for several days and then, poof, up and vanished without a trace (to this day).
Younger people sometimes forget that all of us from my generation graduated two full years later that we should have, because of hurricane Alycia, or that the entire country faced great challenges after the destruction of Denver, the war with Japan, not to mention those years from Presidents Palmer to Taylor, where we swapped Chief Executives like baseball cards during what seemed like endless national crises and terrorist attacks.
Before these years of “upheaval,” life seemed simpler. As I entered a new high school the nation prepared to send men to Mars, the headlines chattered with benign drama: budget debates of how much money should the United States provide the UEO or contribute to Moonbase Alpha or the Earth-Saturn Probe. Other headlines merely chronicled the mundane: the killing of Jim Crumb a.k.a. Buffalo Bill, the court martial of Colonel Nathan Jessup, the return (and subsequent vanishing) of the Oceanic Six, or local celebrity Raylan Givens, a lawman who seemed to make the Tennessee papers more than Bloom County. Of course, Rocky Balboa had just retired, the Cubs finally won the World Series, and we had those rather curious incidents in both the Sonoran and Gobi Deserts, where in the case of the latter, if you remember, an entire ship, one missing for years, reappeared. On a more straight forward note, the 6th Day Laws had just passed; the Glass Tower, the largest skyscraper in history, erupted into flames; and then we had that train wreck near Devil’s Tower Wyoming, which forced an evacuation of damn near half the State.
In hindsight, the first rumblings, which should have indicated the years of turmoil to come, started emerging then. Maybe what we considered mundane and benign hid a deeper mystery. That summer, for example, before I started at Hawkins, my family had travelled to Dyersville, Iowa and visited Mr. Kinsella’s baseball field. There, I met two FBI agents who had just left Sioux City. While our paths crossed but for a day, the curious chat we had left a deep impression. Some claimed to see dead people there (I did not). This came on the heels of swirling local rumors of alien abductions. We all want to believe, one agent mentioned, and his conviction has stuck with me. The melodrama of Hawkins Senior High, which encompassed my teenage years, should have served as a looking glass, a crystal ball foretelling what would come to the country writ large. I, however, wanted, like in that movie whose title eludes me now, the blue pill. I would become a modern day Platonic Odysseus: be an ordinary man and mind my own business, except that did not last long.
This is not a history book.
This text remains primarily a personal account of people and events as I perceived them many moons ago and can remember today. I did not fathom the roles the four of us would play until long after they had played. Furthermore, I do not claim to fathom them all today. I do believe nonetheless that they set the stage and prepared me for the things to come far more so than I appreciated then. I only offer you one account that chronicles the actions of myself, Jonathan Michael Burcham, William Mathew McClane, and certainly Richard Daniel Holst, a circle of four that continuously butted heads with Michael Holt, Robert Gibson, Todd McElroy, and, of course, Shane Anthony Phelps. Others, too, played critical roles, the women, for example, Tonya Marksberry, Kelly Armstrong, Gwendolyne Stacy, and, of course, Suzanne Snyder and Melanie Denaro. Still, the cast of characters does not stop there: Daniel Godston, Mark Anderson, Colleen McNally, Glenn Reeves, Jeff Williams, Brian Stewart, and a whole host of secondary characters, et al. shaped events to come more than history has recognized. An oversight I will correct now.
Unfortunately, a few dozen secrets remain locked away with a handful of others that can answer the questions, which will undoubtedly surface after my tale. I hope someday that they will all find an audience. With regard to myself, I did what I did; I will not deny it. But, at the same time, I did not undertake some actions imputed to me by the Hendersonville legends – not that I would not claim some of these deeds, but rather too many who come to walk C.S. Hawkins Senior High have come to paint me as a modern day Theseus. The truth is some seventeen kids lost their lives the four years I was attached to that school, far too great a number to remain overlooked or dismissed. Indeed, at one point, many thought I too had died. Some of the scars still remain rather raw, and I therefore cannot attest that I remain truly objective, but, since this is first and foremost a personal account, it does not matter. Enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment