A significant anniversary was coming up. At the radio station where I worked it was decided that we would mark the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor by playing President Roosevelt's speech to Congress asking for a declaration of war against Japan.
We were going to start playing the speech on December 7 at the time the attack commenced, California time. As that came up during my shift, I was to play the speech. That speech, and the attack that precipitated it, had happened many years before. It was history from a time long before I was born. Playing that speech was reflecting a bygone era.
Yes, the recording of that speech was very old when I played it -- on December 7, 1981. It was forty years old. Now it has been forty years since I played the President's speech on the air. The speech was originally made eighty years ago. Going back eighty years from the time of that speech would be going back to the early days of the American Civil War.
Speaking of President Roosevelt, I have long known of his death in April, 1945. Again, this seemed like almost ancient history of an event that happened before I was born.
On March 30, 1981, we were having a station meeting. The news director came running in saying that President Reagan had been shot. The meeting broke up immediately. The news department spent the afternoon gathering information and handing it to me so I could read it on the air. To be honest, I don't remember much of that information; it seemed to go in my eyes and out of my mouth without making an impression in between. About the only thing I seem to recall was something about the report that Press Secretary James Brady had died. Whether it was the report that he had died or it was the correction to that report, I don't remember.
Since I experienced that day, it always seemed to be a recent event. Then I realized the period of time between the death of President Roosevelt and the shooting of President Reagan was just shy of thirty-six years. As of now, the shooting of President Reagan was over forty years ago.
I grew up during the sound era of motion pictures. While there were many black and white movies when I was young, they all had sound. While not the first motion picture to have a synchronized sound track, the film that is considered to have ushered in the sound era was Al Jolson's 1927 film, The Jazz Singer. I don't know when I first heard of that movie, but I have long known of its importance in film history. It always looked old. The images were somewhat blurry and the audio was terrible. It was an artifact from the past. That film was released in February, 1928, making it forty six years old when I graduated high school -- almost forty-eight years ago.
One of the most famous tourist attractions in Seattle is the Space Needle from the 1962 World's Fair. There is an observation deck at the top. To get to it, you take an elevator that faces out. When you first get in to the elevator, you are able to see maybe fifty feet. As the elevator goes up, you see farther and farther. On a clear day you might see over one hundred miles. Getting older is like going up the elevator on the Space Needle; you don't necessarily feel much different, but you are amazed at how much farther you can see.
History does not seem as old as your originally thought once you have seen a fair amount of it yourself.
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