Remembering defining moments in our history

Monday night’s rain brought a momentary respite from the sapping heat and humidity of the past few days. Even better, it brought out fireflies.
Just watching the flickering flight of the fireflies evoked happy memories from childhood spent watching the incandescent critters, then trying to catch them in a jar, topped by a lid with holes punched by an old-time metal can opener.
Fireflies, wooly worms and roly-polies were my fascination in childhood. I still remember walking to school at Hobgood Elementary from MTSU’s Vet Village and stopping short, mesmerized by a line of wooly worms crossing the road single-file.
And who could forget making roly-polies ball up just by nearly touching them. Then, of course, we’d roll them around for a while until we tired of that. Just as fascinating was the wait to see them decide it was ‘all safe’ to come out again, unfurl and continue on their merry way.
Wonder if we ever made the roly-polies ‘drunk’ dizzy like we did ourselves with spinning?
Wonder how many generations of children throughout the ages have shared similar fascinations with nature’s creations?

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Every generation has its defining moment(s). For mid-Boomers like myself, our first defining moment came on Friday, Nov. 22, 1963 when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. We were at school when the news spread. We’d never seen teachers openly weeping. We did that day. JFK was young and vital, like our parents. His death in such a manner was unfathomable.
Then we watched as history unfolded on TV. We’d seen NASA space launches on TVs wheeled into classrooms, but never had we seen the spectacle and the horror that unfolded in November that year. The procession to the Rotunda. The First Lady with her two small children at graveside; young John John in short pants saluting his fallen father.
Most of the nation was watching live TV when a handcuffed Lee Harvey Oswald was led through the basement of the Dallas County Jail only to be shot before our shocked eyes by Jack Ruby.
Innocence lost.
Our second defining moment came in the form of a news flash across the TV around supper time not quite five years later. It was April 4, 1968. A newscaster intoned somberly that Martin Luther King Jr., had been shot and killed in Memphis. I ran to the dinner table wondering out loud why someone had shot Martin Luther King’s son. Soon it was explained that it was the man himself that had been killed.
Innocence lost times two.
At the time, I was engrossed, enraptured and enthusiastic (at the tender age of 14) in the Democratic primary campaign of yet another Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, more commonly just referred to as Bobby.
You see, even with the loss of JFK and Martin Luther King, with all the lost innocence, we still had hope and belief in dreams of change.
Then came the night of June 5, 1968. Watching TV later than usually allowed, we exulted with the crowd in the Ambassador Hotel’s Embassy Room ballroom in Los Angeles as Bobby claimed his California primary win.
After his speech, bedlam ensued within minutes as shots rang out and the horror of yet another assassination became clear. Again people openly sobbing. Again another fresh hope not just dashed but devastated
Innocence lost times three.

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Another loss of innocence came not on the national stage but much closer to home, in Nashville where I lived at the time.
Context is important here. We grew up in a time when children could (and did) play outside at night without fearing anything except missing Dad’s piercing whistle that called the dog and us to the house for the night.
Fond memories come of nights spent on Wesley Street in Tullahoma when all the neighborhood kids, the Hyde brothers, the Whites and Debbie and myself would play Sheeps and Wolves past dusk until forced indoors by parents.
With a childhood like that, which was normal for our generation, the Feb. 25, 1975 disappearance of 9-year-old Marcia Trimble, a Girl Scout out delivering cookies in her small sheltered Green Hills neighborhood, shook us all to our cores.
A Nashville resident at the time, at the age of 22, I was among a shocked urban community that could not fathom the disappearance of a Girl Scout within her own community. We had always been safe in our neighborhood.
Huge police resources were brought to bear. They searched the neighborhood, once, twice, three times and over again and again.
How could it happen? There was no trace of young Marcia Trimble.
Young neighborhood teenage boys were under suspicion.
Then on Good Friday, Marcia’s mother told the media she was confident that God would bring her daughter back to her on Easter Sunday, two days hence.
Her faith was rewarded when Marcia’s body was found Easter Day down the road from where she was last seen, inside a garage under an toy swimming pool turned upside down.
But police officials where adamant they had searched the garage before that day.
For 33 years the mystery remained unsolved. Then last week, forensic evidence led to the arrest of a 61-year-old convicted rapist, one Jerome Barrett, who is already facing murder charges in the rape/murder of a Vanderbilt coed, whose family, just coincidentally lived in the same Green Hills neighborhood area.
About the time the relief, belief and hope that this longtime cold case mystery was coming to resolution, came the news that prosecutors have granted immunity to that long-suspected neighborhood teenager.
Now we are left to wonder all over again. Why grant immunity if the then-teenager had no involvement? Or did he simply see something suspect than he withheld for all the years? One wonders if we will ever know what really happened to Marcia Trimble?

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On lighter and happier notes, Friday night’s Relay For Life event was a resounding success in spite of the scorching, suffocating heat. Creative Illusion’s teepee was a great hit. Among those out and about were Phillip and June Gribble, and Aubrey and June Haley. Organizers working hard throughout the night included Clint Moore on his cart, retired school teacher Shirley Luna, and Paula and David Morris at the Westwood booth.
Especially touching were the luminary tributes from Wally McClaren’s photo dressed as Sherlock Holmes to the stark tribute to my much-loved cousin, the late Renee Hill Brown, who is missed each and every day.

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Among those having a grand old time in period costume at the L. Virginia French Ball were Kyle and Becky Phillips, who cut quite a rug, according to my sources. Blair Fisher was among those representing the teen set while Bobby Taylor sat out the dances, deferring wife Carolyn to her brother Jimmy Haley on the dance floor. Jane Flatt looked lovely in her pink gown, while husband Larry was distinguished in his period attire.