The Truth, nothing but the truth: The Lady in the Red Dr...ess In honor of the foremost lady of American and world journalism, Helen Thomas It’s a long drive in the 1940s from Detroit, from your dad’s old grocery store, to Washington, DC, the roads are long and narrow, and when you get into the mountains of Pennsylvania, you can smell the coal dust, winding around those mountains, carefully, around hairpin turns on old mining roads, but you keep going, the lights of Washington, DC glowing, the place your parents placed so deep in your mind, in your heart Washington in Ike’s time, was full of tension, full of promise and fear, a war in question, but at the White House and before, your questions were for steelworkers in Gary, Ford workers in Detroit, cajun fisherman in Louisiana, farmers in Iowa, dock workers in New York and field workers in California wanted answered-- you and they were one, you wanted to know the “why of it”, the truth, not the jargon politicians used to cover so many indecisions, mistakes and lies, and even if you loved a president, as you loved JFK, he was still accountable to the people, and you served the people, with that strong vibrant, Lebanese voice, that striking red dress, following the dreams of your mother and father, when they told us, we were blessed they came to America, our place of dreams, a new place that gave them a chance, to be what they wanted to be, for us to forge ahead, to be what we wanted to be, to become what we are, what our parents hoped we could be— but that made us make a promise, to take an unsaid oath, to help make this country what they thought it should be, the words heard at the dinner table and in church on Sundays never disappeared in the morass and complexities of time, Winchester, Kentucky, Detroit, Michigan, Washington, DC, being here, but still, living out their dreams and our responsibilities, for America, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, all the same country, all the same people, stayed with you in every breathing moment. So tonight, we honor you, as does the world— there has never been a journalist or person like you, with the courage, tenacity and determination to make our dreams come true, to fight for the truth, the truth that is so necessary in a democracy, a democracy our parents came for, a democracy we know is so precious, your voice was our voice, the voice of those farmers in Iowa, steelworkers in Pittsburgh and Gary, auto workers in Detroit, and old Arabs in their little grocery stores where their wives and children lived upstairs above those stores, your voice, your questions and your courage spoke for all of us, you were ours and we are yours, Helen, the truth, as you always said, the truth at all co
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 08:39:24 +0000
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