I just came across a post by Lanny Davis regarding a PBS movie about Sargent Shriver that will air tonight, and I will definitely be watching. Here’s the link and an excerpt:

Lanny Davis: Don’t Miss “American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver” – Politics on The Huffington Post
…he proved – and I mean proved beyond the shadow of a doubt – that a socially conscientious and caring federal government can be a friend of the average American, not the enemy that many conservatives believe and would have Americans believe.

Davis goes on to give some of the highlights of Shriver’s career and influence, as well as his own history with Shriver.

Davis’ era is my own–his latter years as a Yale undergraduate coincided with my early undergraduate career at Chapel Hill. His writing about the idealism and activism of that time sets up strong, solid reverberations that help fuel my present-day activism; activism that takes place in an era of rising idealism, for sure, but which is still reeling from unbridled greed, arrogance, and disregard for the suffering of others.

My personal bellwether from those years is the one with whom I had a closer, yet still tangential, connection–Shriver’s brother-in-law, Robert F. Kennedy. No, there was no personal acquaintance as Davis had with Shriver, or even a passing interaction. But there was–and is–a heartfelt letter of thanks that RFK wrote to my dad, the late Charlotte Observer columnist Kays Gary.

Someone had sent RFK some of the columns that Dad wrote during the period when he (Dad) headed up the fund raising drive in our part of NC for the JFK Memorial Library. Papa played heartstrings like angels play harps; his writing could, and often did, move the city to tears of a morning as it sat at the breakfast table, coffee going cold while reaching for the tissues. So Dad wrote about the people who were giving, and giving, and giving to the JFK Memorial Library fund drive. And the people who gave the most were, not surprisingly, the people who had the least.

As I said, someone sent some of those columns to RFK, and RFK then sent a very nice letter to Dad thanking him for writing about the people who were giving so much, the people who had meant so much to his late brother. And when it came time for him to sign the letter, he apparently didn’t think he had given enough thanks, as he penned an additional “thank you,” and signed it again.

For me, that letter is proof that those in government can be not only responsive, but personal in their caring. It’s not so much that RFK wrote the letter to Dad, but that he was so moved by the people Dad wrote about that he just had to thank someone. Indeed, he asked Dad to make sure those he wrote about knew of his gratitude.

So I will watch the PBS feature on Sargent Shriver tonight, on this 2008 observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, glancing from time to time at the spot on the wall that is occupied by the RFK letter, and remembering too what RFK said on the night of King’s assassination: “To make gentle the life of this world, let us dedicate ourselves to that.”

I will watch tonight to remember, to be reminded about how government can be made to be good, to be a responsive and beneficent partner in people’s lives, to increase and safeguard liberty rather than limiting the options of those who are below the top 5% income tier or who disagree with governmental powers-that-be.

Then tomorrow I’ll keep plugging away at whatever I can do to bring about greater transparency and accountability in all levels of government, not least because of how many people still feel powerless and don’t really believe that we can achieve substantive change. We can, and we must, and we will. And we can learn something about how to do it tonight from Sargent Shriver, and also get a little transfusion of energy for the work, to boot.

Peace

Deborah Alicen

(Cross-posted on Daily Kos.)