I’ve heard sad things
happen in threes, and that’s how many good conservatives I knew were
lost to Massachusetts in the last two weeks.
The first, Leonard McGuire
of Manomet, Plymouth, was a long-time member of Citizens for Limited
Taxation and an avid Fox News fan. He was also a member of my son’s
extended family, being the father of Lance’s father’s second wife
and her many siblings.
I regret that I never got
to meet such a good CLT member, but my grandchildren have happy
memories of “Papa” playing with them at a family get-together in New
Hampshire a few years ago; he had always welcomed Lance and his
family as his own. The McGuire family had been planning his 100th
birthday party in August; I imagine a life lived that long and deep
inspired as many smiles as tears at his funeral.
The other two deaths were
of younger men, both of whom passed on June 1, at age 89.
Sam Blumenfeld, always
realistic, emailed Beverly’s Michael Gendre that he had just been
diagnosed with acute leukemia -- “which is incurable” --
considerately giving his friends a chance to send a note telling him
how valued he has been.
I met him 35 years ago,
when I started my career as a taxpayer activist; he was a friend of
CLT’s first executive director, Don Feder, and our guru on education
issues. I’d see him when I attended Don’s Fourth of July parties,
where we would all take turns reading the Declaration of
Independence after eating well and catching up.
Sam also kept CLT’s
Center-Right Coalition informed about his ongoing project to try to
make sure American children learn to read. He’s published eight
books on education in America, with investigations on the decline in
American literacy and increase in learning disabilities, including
ADD.
Sam is internationally
known as a leading advocate of systematic phonics. We argued about
Dr. Seuss, of whom Sam disapproved, I think, because there are too
many pictures. I recommend that new parents buy his, “Alpha-Phonics:
A Primer for Beginning Readers” at Amazon, if they want to make
sure their children learn to read.
Sam and Michael, who is of
French background, were beginning to write a version of
Alpha-Phonics for French native speakers, who find it difficult to
learn the odd pronunciations of some of our English words.
Older parents might be
interested in his 1984 book, “NEA:
Trojan Horse in American Education.” That far back, we were all
concerned about the effect of teachers’ unions on the public
schools; Sam was active in support of charter schools and yes, the
Massachusetts teacher unions still oppose lifting the cap on the
number allowed.
Sam’s friend Alex Newman
wrote that “He wanted more than anything to rescue as many children
as possible from illiteracy, ignorance and wickedness”. I look
forward to reading their 2015 book “How
Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children.”
Meanwhile, President Obama
has been wanting to forgive some federal college loans, especially
for students who think they didn’t get their money’s worth from
their college experience. I miss Sam already; would love to ask him
if thinks that parents of public school students who can’t read upon
graduation from high school should get some of their property taxes
back.
My other recently deceased
friend, Robert E. Kelly, would laugh at that suggestion. His own
primary concern for American children, however, was the national
debt: he recently updated his original book about the subject to “The
National Debt of the United States 1941-2008,” which takes the
readers through the history of those years and the decisions made by
elected officials, the courts, and of course the voters that have
set our country on its present disastrous course to unsustainable
burdens.
I was looking forward to
the third edition taking us through the Obama Administration, but
Bob died unexpectedly after a fall. So there will be no more books
from him on history/economics, or on baseball either, another of his
many interests.
I met him some 15 years
ago on the pages of this newspaper, where he wrote a political
column then later drifted into a column on the aging process, which
I’d appreciate more now! I wrote to him and from that beginning
found myself invited to his Peabody home every December to open the
Christmas season with Bob at the organ, his friends gathered ‘round
singing carols.
After his move to Beverly,
we’d sit with his wife, Peg, on his apartment balcony at Colonial
Gardens, talking about politics and the culture. I hadn’t been to
his new address in Danvers, but got an email in early May listing 14
problems with illegal immigration with the subject line, “Does this
bother you?” I replied that it does, along with a host of other
things. He replied with his final question to me: “Are we lost?”
I suggested that we give
it one more election. Will miss sharing that election cycle with him
to see if voters finally take his advice in the conclusion of “The
National Debt”:
“Voters must get angry.
They must vote. They must remove from office those who do not talk
straight and elect those who will cut spending, reduce the size of
government, lower debt, and return to Americans the right to live
their own lives.”
At our last caroling
party, I had my first solo, in response to my ongoing complaint
about the wrong words in “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”
— the line about hanging “a shining
star upon the highest bough.” The proper words are:
“Someday soon we all will
be together, if the fates allow, until then we’ll have to muddle
through somehow…” Have to admit now that my three recently departed
conservatives were shining stars upon a high citizen bough. I hope
we’ll all be together someday. Until then, let’s muddle through.
Barbara Anderson of
Marblehead is president of Citizens for Limited Taxation and a Salem
News columnist.
