- Excerpt
IN TRIBUTE:
Eulogies of Famous People
by Ted Tobias
INTRODUCTION
The excerpt, below, is from the new book, In Tribute: Eulogies
of Famous People, by Ted Tobias. The excerpt contains the
full text of Jacob Javits' eulogy of John F. Kennedy. This book will
help all those who struggle to find the words to express loss, while
helping us realize how these words can lead to profound changes in
the world around us.
A case in point
is the eulogy of John F. Kennedy by Jacob Javits. The Republican
senator used his memorial of the Democratic
president to push
for passage of the Civil Rights Act -- arguably the most important piece
of legislation in the last 50 years. When Javits said of Kennedy, "flowers
will grow from his grave for the benefit of man," he was explicitly referring
to this liberating law.
This excerpt also contains Daniel Patrick Moynihan's eulogy of Javits
23 years later. Millions of people gather at the Javits Center each year,
yet few outside of New York know anything about the man or his works.
"Flowers Will Grow From His Grave For the Benefit of
Man"
A Eulogy of John F. Kennedy
by Senator Jacob Javits
at a Senate Memorial Service (December 1963)
Mr. President, hundreds of thousands of words have been published, and
hundreds of thousands more have been spoken into the microphones of the
world since John F. Kennedy was struck down in Dallas, but none of them
were really adequate. Words never are in the face of senseless tragedy.
Words cannot describe how the American people felt when they lost their
president. Not until the vacuum of disbelief was filled with the
horror of comprehension did any of us realize how much we identified
ourselves,
even apart from personal friendship, with the president -- this intellectual,
vigorous young man -- and he would have been that if he were eighty
-- expressing the very essence of the youthfulness of our nation. It
seems
of little consequence now that there were political differences,
or objections to this or that legislative product, though as far as
I am concerned
there was a very large measure of agreement. What matters is that
feeling of loss -- that personal sense of emptiness -- that all Americans
feel
because their president was cut off in the prime of life. As a nation,
we have lost a president who understood the institution of the presidency,
gloried in its overwhelming responsibilities, and discharged his
duties with dash and joy, which were an inspiration to the youth of
our nation.
But John F. Kennedy was more than that. He was a man filled with the
joy of living. He was a husband, a father -- and my friend.
For myself, I remember coming to Congress the dame day he did. We were
sworn in together on the same January day in 1947. A photograph on
my office wall shows that we two, returning veterans, looked a little
uncomfortable
at the moment in our civilian clothes. It shows us looking at the
Taft-Ellender-Wagner housing bill, and it recalls the first job we
did together when we called
on the National Veterans Housing Conference of 1947, which we had
organized, to back this bill. It was the beginning of an association
which extended
throughout our careers in the House and Senate. We collaborated in
many bipartisan matters, as is not unusual in the Congress. Indeed,
in our
service together in the Senate Committee on Labor and Public Welfare,
we worked closely -- as did Senator Morse and others -- on the minimum
wage bill, the Labor-Management Disclosure Act, and other similar
measures which were major aspects of Senator Kennedy's legislative
career.
I am a personal witness to the fact that he was resourceful, optimistic,
and creative. He became and was my friend, and this is a deep source
of gratification to me and to Mrs. Javits and our family.
Mrs. Javits, too, knew President Kennedy well and admired him greatly.
She will, I know, always think of the president's graciousness and
the warmth of personal friendship which he exuded.
Only a week before his tragic passing, I saw him in the Oval Room at
the White House when he accepted the report of the Advisory Committee
on Medical Care for the Aged, in which Senator Anderson and I joined,
and issued a statement offering encouragement and help.
He was vigorous and healthy and smiling and friendly -- a complete
human being, concerned about other human beings who were no longer
as vigorous
and not quite as healthy as they used to be.
This
concern for the unfortunate by a many with all of the social graces
and all the social status and as much power
as America allows one man
was what made him so much the symbol of the youth of our country. His
wife, Jacqueline, who has given Americans so much reason to be very
proud of her and of all American womanhood as
she reflected in it, in these
last mournful weeks, in the way she carried herself, has said the most
beautiful tribute -- that John F. Kennedy had the "hero idea of history," and
that she did not want people to forget John F. Kennedy -- the man --
and replace him with some shadowy figure in the history books.
She need not fear that. There are already thousands upon thousands
of people in the world working to keep his memory alive. I have been
privileged
to join with many others in this body in cosponsoring a bill to rename
the National Cultural Center and make it a living, vibrant memorial
to this vibrant man who loved the arts. And with Senator Humphrey,
I have
joined in a bill establishing a commission to ensure that only the
most appropriate memorials be created in his honor.
These are well-meaning, deeply sincere tokens -- necessary, but still
tokens. In reality it will be John F. Kennedy's youthful freshness
in his aspirations for our country that will keep his memory fresh.
In a real sense we, his former colleagues in the Congress, are the
only ones with the power to write words which can transform these aspirations
into memorials with meaning. We can write legislative acts, like a
meaningful
civil rights law, which would consecrate and perpetuate John F. Kennedy's
love for personal and national dignity. We can exorcise from our country
-- and the American people are doing that even now -- those extremes
of hatred and disbelief in public affairs which create a climate in
which terrible acts become much more likely.
Acts such as these will be his final memorials. It is within our power
to establish them. Perhaps his noblest memorial is that he would have
wanted such memorials almost as no others.
So, in common with my colleagues in this solemn
service -- and that is what this is today -- I bespeak for Mrs. Javits
and my children --
and I would place their names in the Record, so that as they read this
Record when they grow up, I hope they will read their names in it and
see that their father spoke with deep sympathy -- Joy, Joshua, and
Carla, to Mrs. Kennedy and the children, and to the president's father
and mother
and his brothers and sisters and their families our deepest sympathy
on this terrible bereavement, for our nation and for all mankind, and
in the deep expectation that flowers will grow from his grave for the
benefit of man.
ABOUT JACOB JAVITS
(May 18, 1904 - March 7, 1986)
United States senator and lawyer Jacob K. Javits was born in New York
City, the son of Morris and Ida (Littman) Javits. He married Marian Ann
Borris in 1947, and the couple had three children. Javits received a
bachelor's of law degree from New York University in 1926, and over his
lifetime was the recipient of 37 honorary degrees.
Javits entered into private practice in New York City in 1927 and joined
the U.S. Army in 1942. A major, he served as assistant to chief of operations,
serving in both the European and Pacific theaters of operations from
1942 to 1945. He was discharged as a colonel, and decorated with the
Legion of Merit.
Javits was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1947, where
he served the 21st New York District until 1954. He was New York state's
attorney general from 1954 to 1957. Javits returned to Washington in
1957 as a senator from New York, where he remained until 1981. A liberal
Republican who initially was a supporter of the war in Vietnam, Javits
introduced legislation that became the War Powers Act (1973), restricting
the president's authority to commit troops abroad.
After leaving the Senate, Javits was assistant professor of public affairs
at Columbia University. A prolific author, his books include Discrimination
U.S.A. (1960), Who Makes War (1973), and Javits: The Autobiography
of a Public Man (1981). Javits was awarded the Presidential Medal
of Freedom in 1983, and was a member of the American Legion, Veterans
of Foreign Wars, and numerous other civic organizations. He was a lifelong
resident of New York City.
Eulogy for Jacob Javits
by Daniel P. Moynihan
at a Memorial Service in New York City (March 1986)
"Let us now praise famous men and our fathers that begat us." Thus from
Ecclesiastes, whose author describes himself as "king of Jerusalem" and
whose thoughts commend themselves on this day that we remember Jacob
Koppel Javits.
For as we think of him, now radiantly a part of our history, we do well
to think of the history, the ideas, the devotions he brought to his triumphant
and, at the end, transcendent life. Of these, none was more central than
the Judaic truth that the quest for justice is the greatest of man's
works, and the equally Judaic thought that his work never ends.
"And, indeed, I have observed under the sun: Alongside justice there
is wickedness, alongside righteousness, there is wickedness." Hence,
we learn of the inevitability of oppression, of evil. "The events that
occur under the sun" God has brought to pass. "Even love! Even hate!"
"I realize," Ecclesiastes continues, "That
whatever God has brought to pass will recur evermore . . . and
God has brought
it to pass that
we revere Him."
I think especially of these
words as I consider my years in the Senate with Jacob Javits.
I was his junior colleague,
and while we had known
each other just under a third of a century as of Friday, he was
in every sense my elder, and I would refer to him as "my revered senior colleague." A
word to be used sparingly, and only for those whose lives reveal
a reverence also, above all a reverence for life as God has given it
to
man: with
all its testing and sorrow and appointed end.
He did not go gentle into that good night. Yea,
he raged against the dying of the light and went luminously, gracefully; an
example to the
end. Others will now speak of the man they knew and loved. I take my
leave. Jack: L'chaim.
Copyright ©2002 by Ted Tobias. All Rights Reserved.
Please feel free to duplicate and distribute this file as long as the
contents are not changed and this copyright notice is intact. Thank
you.
