"When You Walk Through a Storm"

Independence Day in the USA

M tends to keep me informed about the goings-on in the World, as rumor has it that, while I may be adept with building and fixing things like walls and cars, I tend to have my head in the Clouds or as others might say "up my Ass." In any case, like the partnership between the pragmatic tribe of Zebulon and the ethereal one of Yisasscar mentioned in Moses' blessings at the end of Deuteronomy and the last day of his life, M and I have forged a partnership in such matters.

This week, she told me about the dying of Sir Nicholas Winton who made a decision many years ago to forego a skiing holiday with his friend and to go save, transport and place 669 young Jewish children from Czechoslovakia to Britain. Apparently, by the time of his death, the number of Souls that came into being due to the extraction of these kids from the pretty certain fate that was awaiting them under the Third Reich's Final Solution program was estimated at on tenth of a percent of all Jews living today ... about 15,000 Souls. Nicholas was then just 30 years old.

By the way, as I recall, Bob Simon shortly before his untimely death during the past year did a 60 Minutes spot on Mr. Winton's accomplishment which he had not bothered to discuss until a family member found a box of letters in his attic relating to this "transport." And, as another aside, the famous and very important Kinder-transport and Schindler's accomplishments made famous by Hollywood rose beyond the level of Nicholas Hinton's accomplishment ... but Hinton did this more or less alone. I suppose Schindler did, too.

When I think about his Mosaic redemption of these kids, I think about what the young comedic singer-keyboardist Tom Lehrer used to say about Mozart ... something like:

'It's humbling to realize thast when Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was my age?

He was already dead 15 years.'

It's difficult not to feel the same humbling comparisons about Nicholas Winton. Still in the very middle of the Second Quarter of life, he saves 669 kids ... doesn't make any fuss about it, at all ... then 50 years later at the end of the Fourth Quarter is dimed out as a hero by a relative, is eventually knighted by the Queen, and goes on to live another quarter Century into, in my jargon, a Second Overtime Period.

Lest we've waxed complacent here in The Land of Milk and Money, not only have we Last Quarter types lived through many storms, but the Storms -- maybe different ones -- rage still. A racist youngster massacres the same people studying their Bible who invited him in to join in this study ... some World Cities are poised to Explode and Burn with anger as Watts and Detroit and Paris did nearly 50 years ago (talk about Shock and Awe) ... the Syrians are on track to kill as many of their own as the Iran-Iraq War did ... the Gazan Palestinians are bombing Southern Israel and the Israelis are bombing Gaza ... Putin and the European Union are sword-rattling and more ... China, Japan and the Koreas are in a potential Death-lock ... Too many major cities are covered in increasingly dense smogs ... and the Seas are threatening to break the tentative peace they've maintained with the shorelines that contain the large majority of the World's major cities.

I wonder: Is there room for a Schindler or a Winton in our World, today. M tends to watch the National News here that for so many years was presented by Brian Williams. At the end of each show -- now, as well, with his replacement, Lester Holt -- the news has a feel-good story ... not untypically about someone doing things for others. Maybe, there's still hope that Good can continue to exist inside raging shit-storms.

I don't wish to idealize a mere mortal such as Nicholas Winton and, yet, one cannot but be impressed by such a man's accomplishments at such a young age ... seeing a problem and doing something about it.

Rogers and Hammerstein have Nettie Fowler, starry-eyed Julie Jordan's cousin in Carousel, singing out about such fortitude in her deep voice, recommending that she take on what she can in the face of life's pains:

When you walk through a storm hold your head up high

And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm there's a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain

Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on

When you walk through the storm hold your head up high

And don't be afraid of the dark

At the end of the storm there's a golden sky

And the sweet silver song of a lark

Walk on through the wind

Walk on through the rain

Though your dreams be tossed and blown

Walk on, walk on with hope, hope in your heart

And you'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone

You'll never walk alone

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May the memory of a righteous man be a blessing to the World ... זצ׳׳ל