Life Begins at 40

Life Begins at 40
by Timothy Rollins

"Beneath the Surface"

Columnist Timothy Rollins I turned 40 today and used the opportunity to reflect on my life now that it is basically half over. The ups and downs in my lifetime, some of which I have been a witness to and some of which has been in the history books for me to read, are things I have felt privileged to have been a part of.

In 1959, Castro came to power in Cuba and there was also the infamous "Kitchen Debate" between Vice President Richard Nixon and Nikita Kruschev. That was followed by the whisker loss the following year by Nixon in the 1960 presidential election to Senator John F. Kennedy (D-MA). The Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961 at the hands of the Kennedy administration led directly to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 that put the United States on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. 1961 was also the year that the hated Berlin Wall was put up by the East Germans.

My earliest first-hand memory of my life was November 22, 1963 when John F. Kennedy became the fourth president in American history to be assassinated. I was living near Detroit at the time and I remember my father saying that this could lead to another world war. For a four-year-old little boy, that was quite a scary thought. It was also one of only a handful of dates on the calendar outside of my wedding and the birth of my children that I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing at the time.

The protests over the war in Vietnam were deafening and were successful in keeping Lyndon Johnson from seeking reelection in 1968 and those protests continued until then President Nixon brought our troops home. The next thing that I really remember was 1970 when the Apollo 13 mission was cut short and nearly ended in disaster. Then there was the break-in at a hotel called the Watergate, which made Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward household names, and led to the downfall of Richard Nixon, who became the first American president ever to resign from office. The Apollo space program wound down and America prepared to celebrate its 200th birthday.

America celebrated its bicentennial in 1976 with one whale of a birthday party and then Jimmy Carter came to town and in the process, almost completely destroyed our combat readiness and military community. Enlisted men were on food stamps, planes couldn’t fly and weapons were unreliable. To add insult to injury, on November 4th, 1979, so-called "students" overran the American Embassy in Tehran, taking hostages that remained as their ‘guests’ until Carter left office 444 days later. Rumor had it that Ronnie sent word that if they were not released by the time he took the oath of office, he was going to order an air strike, but that may have been urban legend.

With the inauguration of Ronald Reagan came another day where just about everybody knows where they were and what they were doing. On March 30, 1981, just ten weeks after Reagan took office, he was shot and wounded by John Hinckley, who was out to impress Jodie Foster. With his recovery came America’s recovery from the brink of defeat. Ronnie rebuilt our military might, restored troop morale and sent a message to the world that we don’t take crap from anybody. That was clearly evidenced by the bombing of Libya in 1986 in retaliation for the bombing of the German disco in which American soldiers had been killed.

January 28th 1986 is also another red-letter day in American history as that was the day the space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Cape Canaveral, killing all seven astronauts on board. Even today, I still remember the names of the astronauts: Dick Scobee, Michael Smith, Judith Resnik, Greg Jarvis, Ron McNair, Ellison Onizuka and New Hampshire schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe. I, like so many others, remember what I was doing at the time and spent the next 12 hours glued to the television wanting to know more about what happened.

Reagan’s greatest achievement came after he left office when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Iron Curtain collapsed and the Soviet Union came crashing down a couple of years later. George Bush had been the beneficiary of this work engaged in by the Reagan administration. He also led the charge in our triumph in Desert Storm, which would have not been possible without Reagan’s assistance that made us combat ready once again.

So with all its ups and downs, I can say at 40, it has been a wonderful life so far and one for which I would not trade anything. Granted, we have Bill Clinton with his anti-military and treasonous antics starting to gain more attention, as well as the daily irritations that can sometimes get under one’s skin, but nonetheless, I am glad to be alive.

All I can hope for is that we do not become slaves to the Chinese as a result of Clinton’s selling both his office and our national security to an avowed enemy. To me, treason is treason, and the only acceptable penalty for it is death, regardless of whom the offender is. If Julius and Ethel Rosenberg can be executed for treason, so should Bill Clinton. ***