donbosco
Inconceivable Member
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I know where I was 51 years ago on the evening of Thursday, August 8, 1974. I was watching television with my Momma and Deddy as Nixon announced that he would resign. Since the previous summer, when I had been religiously tuned in to the Senate Watergate hearings on TV, I had become politically activated like never before. I had just turned 16. As far back as I could remember I had ‘hung out’ in my Momma and Deddy’s store. By 12 ‘working’ there after school and in the summer had become a regular thing, albeit not too-too strictly - there WAS basketball and baseball and tramping around in the woods that could get in the way of a shift here or there. My parents let me be a kid a lot of the time.
Most of my summer of 1973 viewing had happened while I ‘worked’ in #BonleeHardware. We sold televisions and always had one on display by the front door of the store. Through that summer of my 15th and 16th year that TV was always tuned to PBS, or Channel Four, WUNC, Educational Television. Deddy was, of course urgently interested too, he’d never thought much of Nixon, and wanted to keep up as well. I’ve always known that he let me shirk that summer so that I could see history in the making, know how government operated, and that dishonesty was bound to be punished. That I would keep him updated when he was drawn away to wait on customers and problem-solve was a given. We would follow the rebroadcast again that evening.
So there in that General Store of All General Stores, the counters and walls brimming with pipe fittings, paint cans, shotgun shells, pliers and screwdrivers - you name it, we had it - I watched the corruption of Nixon and those that he had gathered around him exposed - a drama orchestrated by a very much native Tar Heel, Old School Democratic Senator Sam Ervin from Morganton, NC. I also saw that - at least in those days - Republicans like Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker were also after the Truth. (Tip of the modern hat here to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger who operated in the spirit of Baker and Weicker and paid the price for it)
The hearing the summer of ‘73 was not the immediate end of Nixon - that took another year - but it was a beginning for me. Up until that time I had talked very seriously with Deddy about military school and the prospects of attending the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. I think that was a reflection of my buying into the Cold War Red Scare Pseudo-McCarthyism of politicians like Nixon. But between ‘73 and that president’s resignation in shame in ‘74 I did a lot of reading and listening. I also did a lot of talking with my Deddy about the future. We decided that law school was my path forward. I was inspired by the investigatory process that I saw unfolding via the #WatergateScandal.
Turned out law was not for me but the rather similar detective work of a historian was. We’ve sunk mighty low in the years since Nixon and as a teacher and researcher I have come to know well about some of the other depths that we have plumbed. Nixon was a wake up call for the nation - it certainly was for me. It is interesting that immediately following the letdown of Watergate (and the tragedies associated with Vietnam) we elected a very honest and deeply faith-based Jimmy Carter as our president. He’s proven the truth of his principles in the years since his single term in office while in the meantime - in contrast, we’ve gone remarkably low - inconceivably low given the hope and trust in a system that the example of the Senate Watergate Hearings brought to a 15 year old boy in #DeepChatham. I was, understandably, disappointed when Nixon never fully paid for his crimes and destruction but was swept along - at least for a while - in the argument that healing demanded blind forgiveness - a pardon if you will. I know better now.
We need so badly to shine the same bright and unwavering beam of light on recent deplorable episodes in government - without justice there is no chance whatsoever of recovery - of the possibility of hope and trust blossoming in the hearts and minds of today’s 15 year old boys and girls. We didn’t finish in the ‘70s. We owe it to the future to do so now. SOMEHOW THERE MUST BE JUSTICE.
#OTD (August 8) 1974, in an evening Television address, President Richard Nixon announced that he would resign. The next day Vice President Ford was sworn in and suggested that “our long national nightmare is over.” On September 8, 1974 he pardoned Nixon of any crimes he might have committed.
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