(image source: US National Park Service)
28 august 1963: The end of my junior year; I was home (Toledo OH) from college for a couple weeks before returning to college. As during the summer between my sophomore and junior years, I'd spent this summer break as a counselor at a camp in Jackson MI for underprivileged children. Their parents were either a) too poor to afford sending their children away for the summer and/or b) one parent - if not both, in a rare instance - were incarcerated in Michigan's Jackson State prison.
The camp had been founded by two wealthy Jackson MI families, both of whom had lost a son - in his early 20s - during World War II. The families founded the camp in their sons' memory and honor, deliberately for young, impoverished children, often being reared by a grandparent or in foster care. Children, ages 5 -11, could attend the camp, and often, we had an entire family of siblings.
A camp session was for two weeks and the only rule: you had to stay the entire two weeks. If you left, that was the end of the camping experience. Forever! I remember how we did everything under the sun to cajole the kids into staying. Camping and counseling and loving those children are indelibly carved memories.
28 august 1963: On this date, Martin Luther King gave his "I Have A Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial here in Washington DC. I watched on the television.
28 august 1983: Twenty years later, I'm now living in Washington DC and I've joined the thousands who've traveled here to commemorate the first March on Washington and Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech. My memory, then as with today, took me back to that first March and to the camp and the children. It was also pretty miserably hot.
28 august 2018: Fifty-five years have passed. Today is pretty miserably hot. A lot has happened in the intervening years. Today, I remember those children at the camp and I know not all made it. But I trust those that did were guided and assisted by their camp experiences. Today I'm not sure where we and our children are headed. I just know that we have to keep the dream alive.