Historical Blips

I read the eulogy at my father’s memorial service on March 13, 2010. The program at the beautiful Christ Church Bronxville said it was “The Rite of Burial and Mass of the Resurrection for Gerald James Clarke.” The weather folks had warned of high winds and flash flooding. They were spot on. During the service the electricity went out so dad’s story was told by candlelight. Afterwards people were generous with their responses, including my brother John. He did add, however, that the 1959 Ford station wagon I made such a big deal about was actually a 1960. And that first parish in the US for our grandfather was in Youngstown, not Canton, Ohio as I originally wrote. When I came home, I made the changes and then posted the eulogy.

Then I got the following note from John:

“What a wonderful story. It's even better to read it in the quiet of the moment ... without howling winds, creaking roof beams and rattling windows. There is one other correction, but I'm not sure you should make it. The photograph of the young couple returning to Fenn College actually has six people in it. Mom and Dad and you are there, but there's a baby in Dad's arms (me) and two young students (boy and girl) each in their freshman beanies. To me, the photo told a story of lives interrupted, but getting back on track; of young students attending classes with men only a handful of years older who had survived a war of which little would be said and would define them for the rest of their lives; and that no matter how much the world had changed, freshmen still had to wear silly hats.”

Now, this was a more fundamental error than ’59 vs. ’60. I erased my brother from the picture, let alone the fresh faces of America’s future! I felt I should change the blog record immediately, but then I realized the convolutions that would be involved. Already what was purported to have been written on Keswick Ridge and then delivered at Christ Church, had been changed. A minor thing, no doubt, but not the actual words that had been spoken. To change the description of the photograph from the Cleveland Plain Dealer would also entail re-writing my metaphorical interpretation. I decided to leave the blog alone.

We all know that memories are fallible and that histories are particularly prone to the kind of mistakes I made. It is a good thing, however, to recognize that two slightly different versions can yield the same sense of reality.