President Kennedy

I entered Barrington High School in fall, 1960. Shortly after the school year began. Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts stopped and gave a short talk on the front steps of the high school. I estimate I stood ten feet away from him. I thought President Eisenhower was an old old man who needed to pass the baton to a new generation. And so he did, in a highlight of my freshman year.

Count ahead and you will realize that the term of President Kennedy followed my four years at Barrington, and during his run for re-election I was a senior. The day he was assassinated in Dallas is etched deeply into my memory; for that matter the entire weekend is. To visit Arlington National Cemetery is, to me, a visit to the grave of a highly inspirational President. Rest in peace, JFK.

Smithsonian Air and Space

Just down the street from the Holocaust Museum is a string of several Smithsonian museums, one of which is the excellent Air & Space Museum. Here we see the Wright Brothers' Flyer from 1903 just down a few display halls from NASA's Apollo 11 moon landing capsule from 1969. I look. At these two relics and I notice that only 66 years after a flight of 108 feet, two men walked on the moon, a quarter of a million miles away.

Yona Dickmann

Just outside the entrance to the permanent exhibit, two ladies sat at a simple table, smiling and waiting to visit and answer questions. Yona Dickmann, seen here, spoke with us for perhaps twenty minutes, answering questions and sharing memories. A survivor of Auschwitz who lost her entire family, she is today a delightful lady who made our visit all the more poignant and memorable.
After she recalled a soup made with water and a single potato and expected to feed ten, she was asked if she thinks about those things every day, all these years later. No, she said, she does not dwell on the memories.
"But I never throw food away, never," she added. Even after all these years. We felt fortunate to be granted time to visit with this wonderful lady, the epitome of survivor. She became one of the two most powerful memories we will retain from our week in Washington. The other will come up in a later post.

Holocaust Museum

Our previous visit to Washington DC had been more than 20 years earlier, at a time when a building was just going up in remembrance of the Holocaust. I recall driving past the building site right along the National Mall, so I went online weeks before the trip to secure timed tickets to see the powerful permanent exhibit.

The two-to-three hour trip through the exhibit was a multi-media experience to recall the pre-war beginning, the full-scale wartime activity, and the post-war developments. Much of the exhibit is a no-photograph zone, but here we see the exterior of the building and the quiet, solemn Hall of Remembrance. The best part of the experience will be in the next post.

National Archives

An imposing place to visit, the depository of all significant official documents of our country, the National Archives features but three of them.

To see once again the original Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is an opportunity to not only see history but to dwell on it.

Constituent Coffee

As we headed off to see the Senate in session, Sen. Durbin's interns invited us to the weekly Constituent Coffee at the Hart Senate Office Building, planned for the next morning. After Sens. Durbin and Burris spoke for a few minutes, they answered questions for perhaps a half four, then had us all line up for photos. The Senator's office staff asked us to write down an email address and what we were wearing, and later that afternoon we had a nice souvenir of the visit.

The other image is one I took from the window of the room where the Constituent Coffee took place. An awesome vista of that magnificent building.

Folger Shakespeare Library

After a nice lunch at the Capitol Building's new Visitor Center, a short side trip two blocks on East Capitol Street brought me to the Folger Shakespeare Library. More significant as a research library than a museum, the Folger has a couple of first edition copies of the 1623 First Folio. Along with a small display area, there is a nice theater seen here, where a regular season of great drama is staged.

Outside the building is a quiet garden with some interesting statuary, one featuring Puck with the inscription "Lord what fools these mortals be." A nice stop for literary enthusiasts.