#OTD Bill Withers: This Date in History

[donbosco]

 

[StoneColdHeel]

I remember getting off the bus at.my grandma's house and watching the news coverage about Reagan being shot, but I don't remember the championship game.

 

[Centerpiece]

I was in Philadelphia. Heard about the shooting and was more afraid that they would postpone the game.
Game went on as scheduled. Watched it in the hotel bar.
Sad night for me. But only because we lost.
To hell with Ronnie Raygun

 

[donbosco]

218,092 views Oct 3, 2007

Cameramen capture the many vivid angles of the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.http://channel.nationalgeographic.com...

From a friend involved in the making of the film: "...this is a link to a documentary I edited for National Geographic. We had access to the audio recorded in the Situation Room that whole day. It is filled with very interesting moments...it did not fill me with confidence in the intellectual quality of those in the highest positions of the US government. Also, George W. Bush seems to have been almost as grammatically challenged as his son W."

 

[donbosco]

Bill Withers passed away on March 30, 2020 (his family announced his passing on April 3). This was a sad thing for me and a lot of other people of course. Bill Withers first came to my young boy world in Chatham County by way of "Lean on Me," I guess his most well-known release (or was that “Ain’t No Sunshine”?). At the time (1972) I was deeply into activities at my church in Bonlee. Fourteen years old, I was teaching my age-group Sunday School class a good deal of the time and my contemporaries and I there were also increasingly participating in the choir and other worship service moments. It was an interesting time as I look back, especially when I do a little research into the context and recollect the world around me as I was receiving it.

What I found when I dug into those times was Jesus all around and me, a sponge soaking up every bit. I was also absorbing, breathing in nigh literally, every scrap of media that crossed my eyes and ears. The radio, then all AM, was a lifeline into the outside world and WKIX in Raleigh and WNCA in Siler City were primary senders. There I got my tunes. My brother Glenn had left the radio in our bedroom tuned to those stations when he went off to college. Indeed, his own dedication to the hits of the day had in turn introduced them to me. During his high school years he had even been a Disc Jockey at the Siler City station and our house was filled with 45s and the rock and soul sounds of the mid-1960s. Everything from the British Invasion to MoTown to the Rhythm and Blues of East Coast Beach Music (the stuff I would later discover was the favorite of Frat Boys one I headed off to college). AM radio played all those things in those days — the radio stations that I was glued to were hardly discerning in their playlist — you got a little bit of everything. And that was good.

Looking back I can see that as the early 1970s started up I was feeling very introspective. I read Hal Lindsay’s ‘The Late, Great, Planet Earth’ with its apocalyptic prophecies tied to current events and the End-Times seemed to loom. In contrast the 5th Dimension sang about “The Age of Aquarius” and the dawning of a new era of love and peace and harmony. Of course, Barry McGuire’s ‘Eve of Destruction’ was always somewhere in the depths of my remembering as was The Bomb. At church the messages were intriguing to say the least. While the preacher railed against long hair and the wrong-headedness of Protesting for Peace I was reading, really reading, ‘Good News for Modern Man,’ a New Testament transposed into the language of the day. I still read the King James Bible of course, and even took copies of both to church with me on Sunday, but there was something enticing, almost subversive, about that Good News version. I’ve always been drawn to that sort of thing.

My parents were avid magazine readers. We had subscriptions to Time, Newsweek, The U.S. News and World Report, Life, and Look. I got Sports Illustrated and Sport too. The Progressive Farmer and Southern Living were ‘must haves’ to boot. In 1971 the “Jesus Revolution” made the cover of ‘Time Magazine.’ I knew something was up for sure then.

On the radio too I was hearing some decidedly Christian Rock. “Day by Day” from the musical ‘Godspell’ was there and even stronger was the power of the simple lyrics to “Superstar” from the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar.” Both those songs were top radio hits of 1971. By that time, I had become practiced at reading all sorts of messages into the lyrics of pretty much any song that I heard. The world “out there” was, after all, mighty spiritual and I was picking up on it.

Around that time, somehow I got permission to play the 45 of Bill Withers’ hit “Lean on Me" and say a few words at Sunday evening meeting. I did not know this then but Withers had written that song when living in Los Angeles and missing the community that he had known in the small West Virginia town, much like Bonlee, where he had grown up. I felt the message of the lyrics deeply at that time as I did most things around me. Such is the life of a 14 year old after all. I came to understand that there had been some grumbling in the aftermath from a few (not all) when they noted that the singer was African American but my parents stood by me on it (Deddy was a deacon). I don't think I ever appreciated that enough. The voice and the message have always been powerfully pertinent. They remain so…


“Lean On Me”
Sometimes in our lives
We all have pain
We all have sorrow
But if we are wise
We know that there's always tomorrow

Lean on me
When you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on...
For it won't be long
Till I'm gonna need somebody to lean on
Please swallow your pride
If I have things you need to borrow
For no one can fill
Those of your needs that you won't let show

You just call on me brother when you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on

Lean on me
When you're not strong
And I'll be your friend
I'll help you carry on...
For it won't be long
Till I'm gonna need somebody to lean on

You just call on me brother
When you need a hand
We all need somebody to lean on
I just might have a problem that you'll understand
We all need somebody to lean on
If there is a load you have to bear
That you can't carry
I'm right up the road
I'll share your load
If you just call me

Call me
If you need a friend
(call me)
Call me (call me)
If you need a friend
(call me)
If you ever need a friend.

Addendum to the #OTD...

There "is a Chapel Hill connection to your old well-worn copy of "Good News for Modern Man." Dr. Robert "Bob" Bratcher, a longtime resident of Chapel Hill and member of Binkley Baptist Church, produced that "simple, everyday English" translation of the New Testament while working for the American Bible Society. Born in 1920 to Southern Baptist Missionaries ministering in Campos, Brazil, Robert Galveston Bratcher and his wife, June, returned to Brazil as missionaries themselves in the early 1950s, where Bob taught New Testament and Greek at the South Brazil Theological Seminary in Rio de Janeiro. For the last thirty-five years of his life, Bob lived in Chapel Hill, eventually retiring to the Carol Woods retirement community. (BTW, his son-in-law is Tim West, the former Curator of the Southern Historical Collection in Wilson Library at UNC-Chapel Hill, and his daughter, Priscilla, worked in many years in arts management and as a development professional for a number of organizations, including Playmakers Repertory Company, Carolina Performing Arts, and the Royal Shakespeare Company.g)."*

Info passed along to me by a former UNC Special Collections Curator.