Humankind has spent eons searching for paradise. Famed English poet John Milton, who would’ve turned 402 tomorrow, wrote of Paradise Lost in 1667, he said, to justify the ways of God to man. Maybe he should’ve written in English we could understand. Just kidding (no I’m not). We are questioning creatures so often searching for answers and meaning.
Two anti-establishment Johns: Milton & Lennon
This week has historically been a week when Americans have sought to understand tragic events, none more so than the attacks on Pearl Harbor on this date in 1941. That’s the day 2,400 Americans were killed in a surprise attack on the Hawaiian naval base by Japan. The next day President Franklin Roosevelt made his famous speech to Congress in which he declared that the 7th of December was “…a date which will live in infamy.” America immediately declared war on Japan.
More questioning took place on this date in 1980 when John Lennon was murdered. Fans of the famous musician were devastated at the senseless shooting. December 8th is also the birthday of another tragic musician, Jim Morrison, frontman for The Doors who never found paradise himself but rather overdosed in a bathtub in France years before Lennon was killed in New York.
New York was also the hometown of Sammy Davis, Jr. who was also born on December 8th. So was Sam Kinison, another performer to die young. A lot of people remember Kinison as the screaming professor in Back To School with Rodney Dangerfield who also appeared in Caddyshack as a nemesis to Judge Elihu Smails played by Mary Tyler Moore alum Ted Knight. Knight, whose birthday would’ve been yesterday, actually dropped out of high school to enlist for military service in World War II following the Pearl Harbor attack.
In between fighting Nazis and battling gophers, Knight made various television appearances in the 1980s as did Mr. Dick Butkus who celebrates his 68th birthday tomorrow. After a Hall of Fame career in the NFL, Butkus moved into acting. Sure he appeared on shows like Growing Pains, MacGyver, and Magnum P.I. but real die hards of the 1980s remember his role as Ed Klawicki in that epic show My Two Dads. Yes, I had a crush on the show’s young star Staci Keanan when I was a kid, and yes I was relieved that Step By Step kept her on TV through the 90s, but I feel we’ve drifted away from the legendary prose of Milton here.
Well, it made sense at the time.
Milton went blind during his life and so shared a special interest in the ancient hero Samson, the Old Testament strongman who was betrayed by his woman Delilah and captured by the Philistines who gouged out his eyes and held him prisoner. In Samson Agonistes, Milton recounts the betrayal.
“I yielded, and unlocked her all my heart, Who with a grain of manhood well resolved Might easily have shook off all her snares: But foul effeminancy held me yoked Her bond-slave.”
Now, I don’t know if that kind of talk would’ve worked on Staci Keanan when I was 13 but Dick Butkus could really appreciate a tough guy like Samson. By the way, Butkus was from Illinois, the same state from which Barack Obama was a senator until winning the White House in 2008. On December 9th of that same year, Governor Rob Blagojevich was arrested for attempting to sell the president’s vacated senate seat. Classy move. Reminds me of the “obdurate pride” that Milton once wrote about.
Photo of Jack Schmitt by Gene Cernan w/ Earth in background
Well, onto happier times for Illinois as we come to Mr. Gene Cernan, native of “The Prairie State.” He captained the final Apollo mission, number 17, which departed earth on December 7, 1972. A few days later he became the last human to step foot on the surface of the moon. As the crew departed our planet, they snapped the famous “Blue Marble” picture.
Maybe man will one day achieve those lofty heights again and regain what those who went there have called paradise. The images are amazing and make sense of Milton’s words: “The broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the moon…” You just don’t find writing like that in 1980s television, but I bet John Lennon would have approved.
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On Wikipedia Wednesday I take the Wiki’s word for it about what happened on this date in history (give or take a day) and vamp up the rest to connect the events. It’s okay. I’m a trained historian. You won’t get history like this anywhere else.
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