TheAtlantic: A Grandpa's-Eye View of the March for Our Lives

[Hermit-The-Prog]

He hadn't been to a demonstration since the early '60s, but the energy of the post-Parkland movement drove him to go.

Rachel Gutman 4:39 PM ET

When I asked my mother and my grandfather how the Parkland shooting made them feel, they both said nearly the same thing: “It felt like an attack on the integrity of [my] memories,” said my mom. “It interfered with those pleasant thoughts of living there,” my grandpa said.

When my mom was a teenager, she lived with her parents in Coral Springs, Florida. Their house was one mile away from what’s now Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. They had moved around a bit as a family—first from New York to Florida, and then in the Fort Lauderdale area. But, as my mom put it, “When I think of home, I think of Coral Springs.” My grandpa told me that their Coral Springs house “was the growing-up house where we as a family ... established who we are.”

Maybe that connection is what made my grandpa book a flight to Washington as soon as he heard about the March for Our Lives, even though he hadn’t been to a demonstration since college in the early 1960s. (He knows he joined a group of students who shut down a bridge, but he can’t remember why.) The last time he participated in an event of national importance was when he and my grandmother drove to Washington in 1963 to pay their respects to President Kennedy. (The line was too long for them to make it inside the Capitol, so they turned around and went home.) My grandpa didn’t go to the 1963 March on Washington because he “didn’t think it was that important at the time.”

But after the Parkland shooting, my grandpa told me, “I said to myself, you know what, you have missed so many moments in history because you hesitated and didn’t pay attention. Don’t miss this one.”

[...]

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/03/grandpa-march-for-childrens-lives/556532/

[BigOleDummy]

1. You must ....

.... be quite proud. Actually, my "story" somewhat resembles his. Haven't been to a demonstration since May Day 1971, but felt I HAD to go to the MFOL march here in Louisville. It revitalized me and yes, gave me hope. I just wish I could convey my thanks for that to all the young people that were there.