Michael A. Kroll

Since learning of Senator Kennedy’s death last evening, I have found myself — unexpectedly — weeping intermittently. Perhaps it is because of the passing of an era which happens to be my era. Perhaps it is because I know what his loss means to the cause of health care reform, the new frontiers of civil rights, and a dozen other causes which he championed and which I, too, believe in. Or, perhaps it’s because his death at age 77 — a mere eleven years my senior — is a reminder of how much closer I am to the end than to the beginning. As the poet Andrew Marvell wrote in “To his Coy Mistress”:

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

But then my mind wanders back to the one and only time I met the man, and it brings a smile to my face. It was long before he became the Liberal Lion of the Senate, long before his brother Robert was felled by Sirhan Sirhan in that Los Angeles hotel kitchen, and even before his brother John became the 35th President of the United States. It was long before a succession of lies and political betrayals turned my idealism into cynicism. It was in the fall of 1960, long before everything.

I was then a 17-year-old boy who had just begun my senior year at Nordhoff High School in Ojai. Even then, politics was my passion, and I had been fortunate enough to attend the entire Democratic Convention in Los Angeles that July, and to hear soon-to-be President Kennedy (then Senator Kennedy) make his acceptance speech in the open-air Memorial Coliseum,
I returned to Ojai charged up, stirred to action by the words in that speech, words which, tragically, are as relevant today as they were then:

“…the families forced from the farm do not need to tell us of their plight. The unemployed workers know… The old people without medical care, the families without a decent home, the parents of children without a decent school: They all know that it’s time for a change… It is time, in short, for a new generation of leadership.”

I wanted so much to believe what those words promised, to help bring about this “new generation of leadership.”

My opportunity came shortly after school began that September. The Kennedy campaign was coming to Ojai, and I was not going to miss it. The local newspaper advertised the upcoming event, which would take place in an open field across Ojai Avenue from the Bayless Market. (That field has long since been filled with a shopping center.) It was to take place at noon, and though it was a school day, it was only a ten-minute walk away. I got there just after the speeches began, and stayed until the very end. When the small crowd began to dissipate, I made my way right up to side of the bandwagon on which the youngest of the Kennedy brothers, Ted, was standing, handing out stacks of “Vote for John” literature to all takers. He looked so young, so handsome, so proud of his older brother.

I reached up, and he looked down at me. That broad smile that is now so much a part of our collective memory of the man spread across his 28-year-old face. “You’re never too young to help,” he said in that wonderful Boston accent, handing me my precious stack of propaganda. I doubt that I would have forgotten that moment even if history had played out differently, even if his brother had lost that election to Richard Nixon, even if there had never been a Camelot, two assassinations, and the legacy of one of the greatest, most effective Senators of the 20th Century.

I started back to school in a kind of euphoric daze, clutching my treasure close. Halfway there, I heard the first bell announcing fifth period — Algebra II, Miss Fukusawa. There was five minutes between the first bell and the final bell, after which you would be marked tardy, which always carried consequences.

Kiyo Fukusawa was THE math teacher in my high school for anyone doing college prep. She had taught all my math classes from the 9th grade on. She was a short, stout Sansei (third generation Japanese-American) whom most of us loved, but with whom I had sparred over the years about politics. She had also taught my older brother and younger sister, and our left-leaning politics were never a secret. Ever since her grandfather or great uncle or some relative had seen Teddy Roosevelt, her family had been die-hard Republicans.

When I heard that first bell ring, I broke into a run. And I almost made it, too. I got to the classroom door just as the final bell rang. Hurriedly, I opened the door and — clumsy to a fault — tripped as I entered her class. Glossy pictures of John Kennedy spilled from my arms and spread out in front of me on the floor like a photographic montage. I got up as fast as I could and gathered my pictures up in my arms. But not quickly enough.
At her desk, Miss Fukusawa peered over her glasses at the photos, then peered at me.

“Mr. Kroll is voting for the wrong man,” she intoned in her very nasal voice. “He can do pages 27 through 39 for busy work.” Busy work was her euphemism for time-consuming exercises, her standard punishment.

Actually, I was still too young to vote for the wrong man, but not too young to work for him, to knock on doors, to advocate for the young Senator from Massachusetts, and to glory in his election less than two months later. And now, nearly fifty years later, I am not too old to appreciate the story Miss Fukusawa helped to fix in my memory — a memory that helps me smile through my tears.