Washington, DC with Dad

My first family vacation outside of New York that I remember was to Washington DC. I vividly recall chasing my brother Peter up and down the Washington Monument (which seemed endless), and the excruciating difficulty I had determining how I was going to spend the fifty cents (might have been a dollar) that my parents had allocated for souvenirs (I think I invested in a commemorative coin). My family tells the story that when leaving, my bother seemed to be missing a shirt, found only when they discovered I had put on two (I dress no more carefully as an adult). The trip was particularly fun because Peter and I got to be in the back of the station wagon the whole time (my brother Eric was in front with my mother) because there were three teenagers in the car going to DC for some boring rally of some sort, of which we had to spend some time attending.

Many years later I worked out that, if the trip took place in the summer of 1963 (when I was turning seven), the rally in question must have have the Poor People's March, where Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream Speech," and my parents had been driving African-American teenagers down from Long Island to attend.

My father died this weekend. He epitomized hard work, integrity, and family for myself, my brothers, and all who knew him. He was for every decent cause long before the cause was known by all to be decent. He will be sorely missed by us, those who know him and devotees of all good causes not yet fully recognized as good.