A woman named Hester, who lived In a tenant cabin facing Crump's Pond, was the one who gave us the first news of President Roosevelt's death.
We were pumping water for our milk cow at the time, and the sun was yet about two hours high. Anyone familiar with the ways of the poor southerner will recognize Hester's way of breaking the story, for she used the negative approach, quote:
“Mister Brodie," she asked, "President Roosevelt ain’t dead is he?"
"Not that I know of, Hester," we replied, "but why do you ask such a thing?"
"Because some little chillun what was fishin’ In yo' pond out front o' my house a while ago, tole me he was!"
"Then it must be so, Hester. For that is usually the way with bad news. It travels fast."
We kept on pumping water, for the cow must drink regardless. and hoped against hope that those kids had just been fooling when they told the old woman about the president being dead. Then we remembered the newspaper picture, taken about (wo months back of F.D.R., Winston Churchill, and Josef Stalin at Yalta, and how old and worn, and tired Mr. Roosevelt had looked as he sat there.
We recalled incidents in the life of this great American, other conferences, the fireside chats, the destroyer deal, the call for fifty thousand planes a year, and right on back to the first time we had ever heard him say "my frlends." This was over Gordon House's radio, during the presidential campaign in 1932, and a band in the background was playing "Happy Days Are Here Again."
The trough was full at last and we picked up the milk bucket and walked toward the airbase highway and the bus stop. Our path led through Kitten and Rackie Low's backyard (where the Dykes family lives today), and we met them there and asked if it was true about the President's death.
"Oh yes", said Rackie. "He died two hours ago, and Truman has already been sworn in."
The twins, Billy and George Reilly Low, repeated after their daddy as was their custom, and then wee small Charlee echoed them, quote:
"Oh yes, Bawdie, he die two hour 'go and Too-man aweady swo' in!"
That was April 12th, 1945. We caught the bus, right where the nine-foot road forks off the Airbase Highway, and came to town. All was quiet on the bus ride, and the usually talkative driver's face was a study in silence. No wisecracking from the GIs or civilians who rode with us. Mister Roosevelt had been all of us president, and his passing was a personal loss to every man, woman, and child aboard that bus.
So that was ten years ago and, for the past several weeks, a lot has been said and written about the Yalta Papers. And little that Is kind has been said or written about the worn, tired F. D. R. who was a party to those papers. Precious little kindness, in fact, but plenty of harsh judgment based upon the second guess. And a heap of this harshness from the Republican side of the aisle in Congress, where there's always congressional immunity, to say nothing of the lack of physical risk in fighting a dead man who cannot fight back.
But, as of last Tuesday, Yalta and its coroners are shoved squarely out of the headlines to make way for a vaccine and the man of scientific medicine who discovered it. Dr. Salk has front-page billing these days, and so do the little children with their sleeves rolled up, awaiting the shots that will keep them safe from poliomyelitis and forevermore.
And that's the sort of immunity we like to read about. Not congressional immunity, which permits loons to rant, and vindictive men to clobber the reputation of the dead; but immunity of limb and muscle, not only in bodies living but in generations yet unborn.
And everyone who thrills to the reading of this immunity will remember that great big American who could stand only with the aid of wires, and canes, and braces; who made America polio conscious: and who sparked the good fight which today praise God, is all but won. BC.
