The Lion Sleeps Tonight

At some point when I was a young boy, I learned that Bobby Kennedy and I had shared the same birthday. This was in the early 1970's, when I was about 11 or 12 years old. At that point I really had no idea who he was, or that he had an older brother who had been an American President who had also been assassinated.

I actually do have a childhood memory of the 1968 U.S. Presidential election. I have a memory of living on American Street in South Philly, and most of the families that lived around us rooting for the Democratic Party candidate, Hubert H. Humphrey, to win the election against Republican Party candidate Richard M. Nixon.

While I didn't understand politics on any level, I sensed a strong 'vibe' from the adults both in my own family and my friends' families that this was a big deal. It was important in some way. It mattered. And since my people were rooting for Humphrey, well then, so was little soon-to-be 7 years old Matt Veasey.

As history tells us, Humphrey lost. I actually remember having the feeling for the first time in my young life of disappointment. I had no clue how all of the people around me could possibly be rooting for someone and expecting them to win, and then having that person lose. It just did not compute in my young mind, and I was disheartened.

Of course, as I said, I was about to turn 7 years old in just a few weeks. Between my birthday coming up, then Christmas, and the early months of 2nd grade at Our Lady of Mount Carmel catholic school with the gorgeous Ms. Sarah Hillock as my teacher, there was plenty to distract me in short order and take my attention away from a silly election.

Despite having that impression of the 1968 election, I have no first-hand memory of the vital national events that had happened earlier that same year with first the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and then of Robert Kennedy. It was only by somehow randomly stumbling upon the fact of our shared birthday a few years later that I began my own infatuation with the Kennedy's that would last for decades.

I began by going to my local library, and taking out and reading a book on RFK's life. I honestly don't recall which book it was, just that the impression left on my pre-teen mind was that it was a substantial book, a 'hardcover', which I had not read many of to that point, with lots of pages and pictures.

That book was also the likely beginning of a love affair that continues to this day, one that I have with non-fiction books, especially histories and biographies. I read and learned about both Bobby and his life and assassination, but also about his brother John, who had actually been President, and John's own assassination

This initial reading of the Kennedy brothers led me to become interested and pursue reading about JFK, Jackie, and 'Camelot', the nickname given to his brief Presidential term. Much of what I read made heroes of the two men, and I took on a popular belief of the times that JFK had been the victim of a conspiracy. No way could a single gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, have pulled off the murder alone.

All of this pursuit of knowledge about the lives of JFK, RFK and their families and times came over the course of my later grade school years and through my high school years. I had also, of course, learned that they had a younger brother, Edward 'Ted' Kennedy who had followed his brother's paths into politics.

In November of 1979 I turned 18 years old, and so the following spring, in May of 1980, for the first time ever was allowed to vote in a Presidential election. I was a Democratic Party loyalist and socially liberal idealist in those days, and so I was registered with and would be voting in the primary for the Democratic Party candidate.

The leading candidate for the Democratic nomination was the current President of the United States, Jimmy Carter. A peanut farmer and former Governor of Georgia, Carter had a largely disappointing first term, and was being considerably weakened by a foreign affairs crisis in which radical Islamists had taken American citizens hostage in Iran.

Incredibly for me, especially considering my now fully developed admiration of the Kennedys, his leading opponent would be that younger Kennedy brother Ted. Just weeks before the Pennsylvania primary, Kennedy actually came to Philadelphia and made a downtown lunch-hour speech right near my workplace. I was able to slip out of my office at First Pennsylvania Bank and attend the speech in person, standing just feet from the stage.

When the date of April 22nd, 1980 rolled around, I slipped behind the curtain of my local polling booth where I was then living in suburban Prospect Park, PA and pulled the lever for Edward 'Ted' Kennedy. I remember being excited to have the opportunity to vote, but also of being completely satisfied by the experience thanks to the Kennedy factor.

On that day, Kennedy was indeed the winner, easily taking the Pennsylvania primary. He would also count wins in New York and California for his column. Unfortunately, it was Carter who would easily take the Dem Party nomination, eventually defeating Kennedy by a 51-38 margin in the popular vote and easily receiving the Party nomination at the convention.

Carter would go on to be crushed under the weight of a perceived weak response to the Iran-hostage crisis and by an economy crippled by oil shortages and inflation. Ronald Reagan swept into office and began what became known as the 'Reagan Revolution', with Republicans taking charge of Congress for the first time in decades.

As for me, I continued as a card-carrying liberal Democrat throughout the 1980's and into the early 1990's, and even after fully transforming into a conservative Republican while riding the wave of the Newt Gingrich led 'Contract With America', I still held the view that the JFK assassination was likely a conspiracy.

The beginning of the end of my Kennedy fandom had come some years earlier when I first began to learn about and read up on the incident at Chappaquiddick island. On July 18th, 1969 in the so-called 'Summer of Love', Ted Kennedy attended a party held on the small island which was attached to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts.

The party was a reunion for some female members of his brother Bobby's campaign staff, including Mary Jo Kopechne who was just about a week shy of her 28th birthday. As the married Kennedy went to leave the party at around 11:15pm, he agreed to give Kopechne a ride back to her hotel. An off-duty sheriff saw them over an hour later stopped on a dark road. When he approached to see if they needed help, the car suddenly took off.

A short time later, Kennedy drove the car off a small wooden bridge and into Poucha Pond. He escaped the sinking vehicle and walked back to the party as Kopechne remained trapped inside, clawing at the inside of the roof of the sinking car. He later returned to his hotel room and went to sleep, never reporting the accident. A couple of fishermen discovered the submerged car the following day.

I had never heard of this incident as a child, and never researched it as a young adult. It was only further along in my adult life that I learned of all the details in what amounted to a drunk driving episode in which Kennedy's female passenger, with whom he was likely engaging in some type of extra-marital sexual conduct, had been killed.

His culpability in the incident was largely covered up by his family's wealth and power, though the incident did derail expected 1972 and 1976 runs for the Presidency. It wasn't just Chappaquiddick, but numerous other Teddy drunken transgressions that emerged in my consciousness. During the 1990's I also became aware of numerous chinks in the 'Camelot' armor as well, as sensational stories of John and Bobby involving Marilyn Monroe and others emerged.

When the motion picture 'JFK' was released in 1991, I saw the Kevin Costner vehicle as proving, at least reinforcing, all of my Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories and beliefs. Those would be quickly dispelled as reports came out refuting much of the film's historicity. The final nail in the coffin of those conspiracy theories was my reading of the Gerald Posner book 'Case Closed', which completely dismantled all of those theories and leaves you understanding with no doubt that Oswald did indeed act alone.

The bottom line is that the Kennedy's had evolved, or perhaps devolved, in my consciousness. From childhood and adolescent heroes they had become political icons in the idealism of my young adulthood. Finally, my own political conversion and intellectual development had led me to see them for what they truly were: flawed men.

There is nothing wrong with being a flawed man. Heck, I'm one, and so is any man or woman who is reading this piece. But when Edward 'Ted' Kennedy passed away last week at the age of 77, I felt little remorse for the man for whom I had cast my first-ever Presidential vote. I did not share even a little in the remembrances and platitudes being publicly heaped upon him in the media.

To me, Teddy Kennedy at the time of his death had become a bloated, pompous, lying, cheating, drunken jerk who kept his political power due to his family's fortune and power and by cow-towing to every liberal group that came down the pike. Worse yet, one who had gotten away with drunk driving and negligent homicide. And even worse yet, the vast majority of those feting him knew it and still applauded his life.

I will never dance on another man's grave. But for me, Ted Kennedy is no loss. What I can look back on as a true loss is that vote that I gave him nearly three decades ago. A vote that he got because others led me to believe he was something that he was not, as well as because I was willing to listen to those talking heads and misleading journalists and scribes.

The man who had become known over the years as 'The Lion of the Senate' will roar no more. The 'Lion' sleeps tonight. RIP, Ted Kennedy. RIP also to my own personal political innocence and naivete.

Will April's Showers Bring May Flowers?

April was a pretty rough month in any way that you want to size it up. Record spending, debt, unemployment. A major shift towards socialism by our government. Increased attacks on the sacrament of marriage by homosexuals and liberal thinkers. And then finally ending with an attack by a Swine Flu pandemic. It's all a bit much for a normally happy soul such as mine to take in for one big reason. There is no end in sight. President Obama was only recently elected, and just took office three months ago. He still has more than three years at a minimum in office, and if the magnitude, scope, and pace of his 'Change' continues as it has thus far it will be an agonizing three years. One thing that I have come to appreciate over the course of these past three months is the utter joy and euphoria that Obama elicits in his followers. It makes me jealous, because frankly I have never, ever had that feeling for a President of the United States. Forget Kennedy and Johnson, I was just a baby. As a young child, Nixon and Ford certainly were not high on my priority list. I liked Jimmy Carter at first. He spoke to my youthful desire for progressivism. He was a minister and brought a certain amount of credibility and morality to the office, which was important to the country after the dishonesty of Nixon's Watergate. And he was intelligent too, a genius, at least that's the rep that the media was passing around. It was Jimmy Carter that began to ruin things for my early liberalism. By the end of his term he was proving to be a major letdown, and I'm still trying to figure out that whole 'genius' thing. His and liberalism's weaknesses were on full display in the face of the emergence of radical Islam, Soviet aggression, and America's energy problems. But still, politics and these major issues at this point were still only news stories to me, fleeting images on the TV set, and I would quickly change the channel to a ballgame or a comedy and go back to my own inner liberal feelings. During the 1980's, Ronald Reagan was king, but I didn't support the kingdom. I didn't vote for 'The Gipper' either time. Here was the first time in my lifetime where it was obvious to me that a large portion of America was feeling something for a President that I just wasn't getting. It was disconcerting to me, because I was beginning in my 20's to actually pay more attention to national and world affairs. I was a liberal Democrat and became a joiner, with paid memberships in 'Greenpeace' and 'Amnesty International', and with subscriptions to 'Rolling Stone' and 'U.S. News & World Report', and enjoying anti-establishment music videos on the new media outlet of MTV such as Genesis' "Land of Confusion". But something began to change. The optimism of the 'Morning in America' days that Reagan led, the return of outward signs of American patriotism, the general feelings of positivism were creeping into my psyche a little at a time. His demand that the Soviets "Tear down this wall!" followed by that event actually happening was a watershed moment, the moment when I began to think to myself "Why are there so many millions of people seeing what I am not?" and I began to realize that these folks couldn't possibly all be evil or idiots, and I actually began to open my mind to thoughts and ideas outside of my previously grounded liberal thinking. But it still wasn't a transition. I still voted for Dukakis in 1988, because I simply was not ready to vote for George H.W. Bush for President. He was as establishment as you could possibly get, and a former head of the C.I.A. to boot, and I simply did not trust a former head of a spy agency to be my leader. When he eventually led us into the Gulf War, all his faults were on display in my mind. I didn't understand the whole Iraq issue. My naive liberalism still had me being sold by those talking heads and celebrities who lamented our 'going to war over nothing but oil' and other such talk. In 1992, with my own life going through major changes on many fronts, I remained a liberal thinker for the final election. When Bill Clinton was elected, it was the first time in my life to that point that my candidate had won, and I was excited. His youthful exuberance was infectious, and I genuinely believed that he would make things better. But I also by this time was already in the habit of looking at issues deeper than the surface, reading and researching major issues beyond just what I was being sold on what I increasingly was noticing was an obviously biased mass media in newspapers and on television. I hated the idea that these folks seemed more like cheerleaders whenever a Democrat was involved, and like antagonists when a Republican was involved. It was all so obvious, and it was turning me off. When I realized that all of the positive economic turns of the early Clinton years were going to happen no matter who was President, that they had actually begun in the final months of the Bush administration, and yet the Dems were trying to take credit, I began to experience my first bit of cynicism towards my party and its politicians. By the end of Clinton's first four years the transition was complete. My own personal scales had tilted towards conservatism over liberalism, and as Newt Gingrich led the 'Republican Revolution' of 1994, I was amazingly in tune with their message and supportive of this man who just a couple years earlier I would have viewed as a negative influence. I was still a Democrat, but I did not vote for Clinton in 1996. The second Clinton term was what fully shoved me over to the conservative side, and my final flip to an actual change of party to the Republican side. Still, even with the election of George W. Bush in 2000, I was not excited. Seeing Al Gore for the quack that he has turned out to be, I was simply unbelievably relieved with the narrow outcome in Bush's favor. Bush was not the conservative that I was becoming, but he was much more tilted in that direction than Gore and his followers would have been. The attacks of 9/11 and President Bush's outstanding leadership in the following months and years cemented my support for him, and helped cement my conservative beliefs. But he never elicited that outright joy as a follower or supporter. And obviously Obama will never elicit those feelings for me. And yet I look around at his followers and I realize something. His supporters are every bit as enthused and enthralled as Reagan's were back in the 1980's, and I was on the outside back then as well. I don't get it, but I am trying to learn more about Obama's programs and ideas beyond what the media on both sides is trying to feed the public. So far, the more that I learn the worse it looks to me, but I am going to try to keep learning and stay open. The showers of April turn to flowers in nature in May. We can only hope that the showers brought on our nation by the early Obama actions in April will bloom into flowers in May, but I don't hold out hope. May has not started well, with an announced SCOTUS opening and the specter of the likely appointment to the Supreme Court later in the year of what will almost definitely be its most liberal member ever. The Swine Flu is still advancing, with a possible retreat for the summer but a return in the fall. Chrysler joins the growing list of formerly private businesses in the auto, banking, insurance and other industries now controlled by the government. It is still raining. But I won't let it get to me. One thing that age and experience teach you is that if you wait, the sun will indeed come out tomorrow. There are signs of hope. We have rid ourselves of Senator Arlen Specter, a RINO (Republican In Name Only) who saw the writing on the wall that we were going to dump him in the upcoming primary and who then ran for the Democratic cover like a coward. And I still hold out hope that one day I will have that President come along who inspires me and elicits that passionate adulation of feeling to go along with a support for their policies and direction that Obama's supporters feel today. Someone like Newt Gingrich, Bobby Jindal, or Sarah Palin. You gotta keep that smile on your face and in your heart, and keep your own dreams alive.

The Good Old Days

Do you know that weird sensation of connection to your roots that you often feel when you see an old family member, friend, lover, teammate, or co-worker for the first time in years, maybe even decades? Depending on the circumstances of your meet, it sometimes doesn't hit you until later. But almost always we go through that exercise in mental nostalgia which carries us back to those younger days and the experiences that we shared with this individual. The innocent memories of childhood. The fun times of high school or college. The struggles and amusement involved in our early work years. The thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat on sporting fields. The life, death, and love of family. Sometimes the person is linked to another or a group of others, and our memories will branch off towards those folks. Well these types of memories and feelings have been happening to me more and more lately thanks to the social networking website called Facebook. I have stumbled across more family members and old friends on the internet thanks to this popular behemoth than I could ever have imagined. People who I worked with years ago. Those who I hung out with on the corners of South Philly as a youth. Some who I played ball with as an adult. And being a police officer for the past 19 years there are cops, both old and new acquaintances. Lots of cops. The site allows you to mentally catch-up with these people. We share small biographies of what we've been up to, photos of our family members and friends, videos of some of our life experiences, music and other media that we enjoy, and conversations with one another and each other. These meetings of late have also driven home another point to me, that my own memories of what is classically referred to as 'the good old days' are truly long gone. For me those days would take me back to my childhood and teenage years growing up in the Two Street neighborhood of South Philly during the 1960's and particularly the 1970's. 'Two Street' is that section of 2nd Street that begins around Washington Avenue and continues south to Oregon Avenue, about a twenty block stretch, and which is bordered on the east by the homes on and around Front Street and on the west arguably by somewhere around 4th or 5th Street, depending on how far south you are. The area is a Mummers kingdom, the home to these merry men and women who star in Philly's iconic New Year's Day parade. Many of the clubs have their headquarters on 2nd Street or just off it, and you can't walk a half block without tripping over any number of residents who participate in the parade in some way. The times when I grew up there were the days of Vietnam, Woodstock, Watergate, Apollo, SNL, Nixon, Ford, Carter, drugs, disco, gasoline rationing, and the ever-looming threat of a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia that was known as 'The Cold War'. But when your age is still in the single digits, and even into your pre-teen and early teen years, most of these big stories are simply not affecting your life as you know it. Your life at those ages is filled with things like family and school, sports teams and friends, movies and music, and eventually as we emerge into puberty becomes pre-occupied with the opposite sex. In my life, family was big, and there was a simple reason for it: geography. My grandparents were all raised in South Philly, and in those days you pretty much settled and raised your families in the same neighborhood where you started. Thus my parents and their siblings, my aunts and uncles, were all raised there as well. And most of that living and raising took place in a small stretch of no more than a half mile. Within those five blocks or so lived my own little family of myself, my younger brother Mike, my mom Marie, and my dad Matthew. We lived on the tiny 2300 block of south American Street which would star decades later in a scene in the film 'Invincible' about former Philadelphia Eagle Vince Papale. Those scenes where Papale plays a rough version of schoolyard lot football? They were real. I can't tell you how many dozens if not hundreds of such football games that I participated in over the years on the school yards, playgrounds and rec centers around Two Street. From 'touch' football to 'rough touch' and even tackle football on grass or when it snowed heavily. My dad had two sisters, and my mom had one brother, and they and their families also lived in South Philly. The LoBiondo family of my Aunt Bobbie lived just two blocks away. The Piernock family of my Aunt Pat lived about five blocks away. The Gilmore family of my Uncle Ray lived a bit further away but still in South Philly. My Uncle Ray Gilmore, my mom's brother, was a DJ with the old AM radio king WIBG which was known in those days as simply 'Wibbage'. His career opportunities in radio eventually saw him become one of the first to leave the old neighborhood, first for the New York area, and then eventually on to Boston. But my mom stilled had many other family members, aunts, uncles and cousins, living all along Two Street. One of the regular joys in those days was on New Years when most of the parade groups returned to their clubhouses along Two Street and would parade down the length of the street, serenading their fans and family members. The tradition remains today as a mini version of the full-scale parade that took place along Broad Street, and has a 'Mardi Gras' feel with costumed revelers jamming the streets. In my own good old days we had two family spots along the parade route that gave us a front row seat to these festivities. My mom's Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen lived right on 3rd Street at Cantrell, where the parade came right past their front door, and my dad's sister Bobbie lived just off 3rd & Jackson (pictured). Both families always had open house parties on those days, and we got to enjoy the parade, family reunions, and good food and drink. These gatherings were like familial glue in my youth, allowing my dad's family at Jackson Street and my mom's family at Cantrell Street to be together in a fun setting year after year. My brother Mike and I would jockey back and forth between the two houses, saying the requisite hello's to our aunts and uncles and then hanging out with our cousins. This was the essence of Two Street: sitting on the front porches and stoops, hanging on the corners, family, friends, Mummers, and all of it made possible, or at least far easier, by the simple geography of proximity. In future postings I am going to talk much more about the particular people and events of my childhood and teenage years, allowing my self to revisit and you to enjoy my own memories in a regular series that I will be simply calling 'The Good Old Days'.