Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Getting to know Ford, Brown in hindsight
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Shanna Flowers is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.
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In life, neither President Gerald Ford nor the Godfather of Soul, James Brown, was my guy.
I didn't dislike them. My misfortune was I never bothered to know them.
Until now.
In death, these two men, who couldn't have been more dissimilar and who represented very different facets of American life, have touched me.
In the past week, coverage of their deaths and recollections of their lives have stirred in me an appreciation for who they were and what they gave to our society.
Hindsight is usually 20/20, and now I finally realize what both Ford and Brown symbolized in their prominence.
Ford reflects an era when politics were more sensible, when a public servant made a tough decision that, ultimately, was in the best interest of everyone. Brown reflects a time when music uplifted and united, rather than denigrated and disheartened.
As a child, I heard James Brown's music on the radio. But I don't recall actually seeing the hardest-working man perform until the mid- to late 1960s, on my parents' new color Magnavox console television.
I remember being mesmerized. Brown was electrifying.
A few years later, here in Virginia, Brown had the same effect on a young college student -- now a middle-aged man whom I respect. He shared with me last week how "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" became an anthem for him at Virginia State University.
Brown's offstage troubles are an unavoidable part of his legacy. But his music liberated black people emerging from the turbulent '60s and standing on a new threshold of educational and professional accomplishment.
As I have listened to people over the past week and read about Brown, I learned how his music transcended cultural divides and also bore universal messages for all willing to listen: Stay in school and steer clear of drugs.
Ford had a similar, healing effect. Under his presidency, we emerged from the "long national nightmare" of Watergate, and from the quagmire of Vietnam.
I saw one of Ford's former staffers on television the other night, and she spoke about how he disliked partisan "bickering." In that way, the trait that supporters value today in Barack Obama was exemplified three decades ago by Ford. In a nation weary of strident partisanship in recent years, we reflect positively on Ford's more moderate approach.
In recent days, we have heard speculation on how the man who presided over our withdrawal from Vietnam was disappointed in the invasion of Iraq. If he was, two of the invasion's advocates -- Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, who worked in Ford's administration -- didn't share his caution.
Ford and Brown were very different men. But both were crucial in their capacity to unify.
Shanna Flowers' column appears Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays.
