On a First Kiss

Eleanor Smith came of age during the Great Depression and World War 2 in the southern state of Georgia in the United States. Her family, she later said, was poor, “but we didn’t know it because everybody was poor like we were.” As the war was ending in 1945, the 18 year old dark haired girl had graduated high school and wanted to attend Georgia State College and study interior design. She had matriculated as the class salutatorian and was a bright student. That’s when she saw the photograph of Earl. And the rest, as they say, was history.

Some people fall in love with a photograph, and that’s what Eleanor did. Of course, it helped that boy in the photo looked so dashing in his US Navy uniform. She couldn’t stop thinking about him. His name was Earl, and he was from the same town in Georgia that Eleanor was from. While he was somewhat older and the two young people didn’t know each other, their families were acquainted. In later years, the couple wondered how it was that their paths never directly crossed in a town so small.

As you might be aware, at that time and in that culture, girls didn’t pursue boys. However, Eleanor wasn’t the typical girl. She knew that she wanted to get to know Earl better. He didn’t seem like the silly boys who were in her grade at high school, the boys who went to the town soda fountain and combed their slick hair back and wore rolled up jeans and sped around the small town in their hot rod jalopies. She could tell, she later said, that the dashing sailor in the photo had a dignity, a class, a certain carriage of character about him that boys her own age lacked. So, through friends, Eleanor arranged to meet Earl when he was home on a leave.

Earl grinned a toothsome smile when he first met Eleanor. He, too, was looking for someone who was more serious about life than most girls of that time. And Eleanor, who seemed cheerful and even playful to a degree, had a seriousness about her that said that she, too, was someone of character and backbone. The couple’s first date was a double date with Earl’s sister and her boyfriend. Eleanor and Earl were in the back seat of the boyfriend’s car when it happened.

Earl leaned over and kissed her.

Well, that had never happened before. Oh, boys had tried to kiss Eleanor before, surely, but she had politely refused. Yet, here was this sailor kissing her on their first date. And in the back seat of a car! But Eleanor had never felt the rush of emotions she felt at that moment when Earl’s lips touched hers. She knew, she said later. She knew he was the one at that moment and in that one audacious kiss.

Well, the couple quickly agreed to get married in early 1946, although they kept the engagement a secret. Eleanor didn’t want to upset her mother with the news that her college education would be put on hold while she and Earl began their lives together. They married in their hometown, in the town’s Methodist Church that was her family’s home congregation. And when Eleanor’s mother heard the news that the couple were to wed, she wept with pride and joy rather than disappointment.

To say that the marriage was a good one would be a gross understatement. Four children were born, three boys and a girl. It lasted over 75 years. It ended only when Eleanor died this week at age 96 in her hometown, the place where she and Earl retired to after lives filled with service to others. And you know her and her husband better by the names their families called them. For most of her life, Eleanor went by her middle name. Earl’s family always called him by his first name. And no one can say that first sudden kiss didn’t turn out to be anything but the beginning of a wonderful partnership between the pair.

I wish all marriages were as happy and successful as that of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.

On a Free Breakfast

We in the west generally believe that the “free school lunch” is something that children in need should have access to in order to achieve academic excellence. That concept is fairly new in education, and there’s even some pushback in some quarters today with an increasing number of people questioning whether it is the responsibility of publicly supported schools to provide that nutrition. However, the argument has been made and the prevailing attitude is that free school lunches should be provided.

Interestingly, that type of free food program for lower income children started not because of a government program but began through a non-profit, private organization that worked in inner-city communities to better the lives of the citizens there. The first free meals for poor kids weren’t lunches, either, actually, but they were breakfasts. This group, a group that also had political goals, began serving low income kids in poorer sections of Oakland, California, in the late 1960s. They knew that people would be more receptive to their ideas if they were a positive contributor to the community to begin with. A local Episcopal Church building was used by this organization to give the free breakfasts to the kids. The volunteer group had gone to local grocery stores to solicit donations and had even consulted with nutritionists to see what types of food would pack the most punch for the kids throughout the day.

The results were astonishing.

Teachers and the school administrators reported almost miraculous improvement among their students who were receiving the free breakfasts before school. Test scores, good behavior, attendance, and over-all well-being showed significant increases. The kids were attentive as well; teachers said that the fed children stayed alert longer, they weren’t getting sick as much, and their prospects for school achievement increased. The volunteers were thrilled with their report card; they quickly expanded the program to other communities across the US. Schools in low-income neighborhoods of Detroit, Chicago, New York, and other large cities began reporting similar results to those in Oakland. The program was a success.

And that’s right about the time that the United States government began to take notice. Mainly, one agency of the federal government took umbrage with the efforts of the group. You see, the head of this governmental agency was such a racist that anything that helped minority people was seen as a threat to the nation in his eyes. He declared war on this program and its volunteers. He began ordering his offices around the nation to begin a whisper campaign against the free breakfast program. Parents were sent notices (ostensibly from the schools themselves) hinting that the group was secretly poisoning the children with the free food. And he ordered them to begin photographing the children as they left the places where they ate in an effort to intimidate the kids and pressure them to not return. The free breakfast program was shut down through this systematic harassment by the government.

What type of governmental bureaucrat–no, what type of human–would stoop so low? The program was good; it was free; no tax money was being spent, and the positives overwhelmingly outweighed the negatives here. Who would do this type of thing?

Well, luckily, cooler (and less racist) heads prevailed. Seeing the benefits of the program, the US Office of Education (what the Department of Education was before that agency was set up in the late 1970s) began offering free lunches and free breakfasts to low-income families. The program started by the volunteers in Oakland in the ’60s was reborn, and millions of low-income children have been helped.

But that success never would have happened if J. Edgar Hoover hadn’t’ve hated the Black Panther Party so much.