November 22nd, 1963
From the scrapbook I made when I was eleven years old.
The following poem is on the last page of my scrapbook. It is an adaptation of the eulogy given by Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. The adaptation was written by Rudolph Umland. My apologies in advance, but I do not know what newspaper or magazine I clipped this from. I had just celebrated my eleventh birthday days before President Kennedy was assassinated.
There was a sound of laughter; in a moment, it was no more.
And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.
There was a wit in a man neither young nor old, but a wit
Full of an old man's wisdom and of a child's wisdom,
And, then, in a moment it was no more.
And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.
There was a man marked with the scars of his love of country,
A body active with the surge of a life far, far from spent
And, in a moment, it was no more.
And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.
There was a father with a little boy, a little girl,
And a joy of each in the other. In a moment, it was no more,
And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands.
There was a husband who asked much and gave much, and
Out of the giving and the asking wove with a woman what could not
Be broken in life, and in a moment it was no more.
And so she took a ring from her finger and placed it in his hands,
And kissed him and closed the lid of a coffin.
A piece of each of us died at that moment.
Yet, in death he gave of himself to us.
He gave us of a good heart from which the laughter came.
He gave us of a profound wit, from which a great leadership emerged.
He gave us of a kindness and a strength fused into a human courage
To seek peace without fear.
He gave us of his love that we, too, in turn, might give.
He gave that we might give of ourselves, that we might give
To one another until there would be no room, no room at all,
For the bigotry, the hatred, prejudice and the arrogance
Which converged in that moment of horror to strike him down.
-- Senator Mike Mansfield
prose adapted to poetry by Rudolph Umland
