Published: May 07, 2008 04:43 pm            

The day of JFK remains familiar

The Bluefield, Virginia mayoral election proved to be a tight race. Councilman and former Mayor Don Harris held the lead over incumbent Mayor Jimmy Jones and for Harris, it was a bittersweet moment. Harris had lost his brother only a few days before the election.

Harris, pleased with the win, also had kind words for Jimmy Jones: “Jimmy is a good friend and very nice person. Jimmy is an asset to our community and has served us well in many capacities.”

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Bluefield, Va., utilized the new Town Hall as the polling place for the town election. Candidates Jimmy Jones, Don Harris, Charles Presley, Donnie Linkous, and Anglis Trigg Jr. were out on the mall shaking hands and greeting people. Ed Presley briefly appeared on the scene to vote and support his son. Trigg and Linkous were unopposed in their bid for two seats on the town council.

The serene setting overlooking the spring grass, budding trees, and blue skies made a perfect day to come out and vote, but he day was marred by the sudden illness and passing of one of the town's police officers. We extend our condolences to Sergeant Altizer's family.

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Back in the spring of 1960, a young man from Hyannisport, Mass., came to our small town. Many on that day impatiently awaited the overdue arrival of the young senator that promised hope for America. We were losing jobs in the coalfields. Men were leaving and taking their families to distant places such as Flint, Mich., and Cleveland, Ohio, in search of work.

Then the young man appeared downtown in the middle of the brick street between the Masonic Temple and the Bank of Bramwell to address the crowd. He spoke with that distinct voice. What a day!

The image of JFK standing before the crowd is indelible and is fixed forever in the minds of those that were there on that day. It was the beginning of a new era of prosperity and change, a time for greatness.

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John Kennedy also addressed a crowd in Athens. He exhorted that, “No problem has grown to greater proportions in the past several years than that of our educational system. And no problem touches all of our lives more directly.”

Kennedy described our status in the eyes of most of the rest of the world. “Our stature abroad — the legend of the “Ugly American” — is affected by how many language teachers are available in the lower grades.

He warned that “American education today is in a crisis…”

He challenged local school boards to listen to urgent appeals about improving the quality of our education, giving more time to gifted students and instituting more specialized courses at all levels. Kennedy noted that children struggle to get any attention at all in overcrowded or make-shift classrooms, with underpaid, overworked and too often untrained teachers.

He quoted Thomas Jefferson: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be. This is still a basic truth.” JFK pointed out.

He added, “We need programs of student aid, loans, fellowships and scholarships — and not limited only to the fields of science and defense. Civilization, according to the old saying, “is a race between education and catastrophe.

“Today, it is up to our government — but basically, up to you, the voters — to determine the winner of that race.”

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We have many of the same problems today that we had in 1960.

We have many of the same problems today that Henry Drury Hatfield identified before he was elected Governor of West Virginia nearly a hundred years ago.

The irony is that these great men, Hatfield and Kennedy — from opposite political parties, identified major problems and told us of their visions for a new dawn. The world was paying attention while many Americans slept.

We still need to fix the same problems and a few more that even these great men could not even imagine.

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There you have it, a few words on politics and items of interest to the Virginias. I hope you have a blue sky day.

Wilson Butt, a Bluefield resident, is a retired Department of Highways official.

        

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