I share my birthday, June 2. with King Henry the VIII and the Marquis De Sade. So far I might as well have not looked. Maybe it gets better but not much. It was the day Lew Gehrig died. along with Leslie Howard, Sammy Kaye and Rex Harrison.

PT Barnum's circus made its first tour of the U.S.. beginning on June 2. 1835. The first night baseball game under the lights was played in Ft Wayne, Indiana, on June 2, 1883. On June 2, 1862. General Robert E, Lee assumed command of the Confederate armies of Eastern Virginia and North Carolina. His work building the defenses in that area earned him the name of King of Spades. On June 2, 1864, U.S. Grant ordered the charge at Cold Harbor that resulted in over 7000 casualties in just a few minutes. The Civil War came to an end June 2, 1865, when Confederate General Kirby Smith surrendered his command in Galveston.

Some of us are old enough to remember Edward R. Murrow saying, "What kind of a day was it? A day like every other day, filled with those events that alter and illumine history." Murrow was a master journalist and a man of deep insight. On the Ford 50th anniversary show in 1953 he said, "If we confuse dissent with disloyalty— if we deny the right of the individual to be wrong, unpopular, eccentric or unorthodox— if we deny the essence of racial equality then hundreds of millions in Asia and Africa who are shopping about for a new allegiance will conclude that we are concerned to defend a myth and our present privileged status. Every act that denies or limits the freedom of the individual in this country costs us the ... confidence of men and women who aspire to that freedom and independence of which we speak and for which our ancestors fought."

On another occasion he said, "If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable."

On receiving the "Family of Man" Award (1964) Murrow brought the past alive and made us look at ourselves. We could use a good dose of Edward's wisdom today as we face problems that threaten our freedoms and our daily lives as never before. In our effort to be politically correct we have forfeited reality for a make believe world. In the mad scramble for money we have lost the true meaning of freedom and liberty and substituted a fruitless and distorted pursuit of happiness.

What sort of a day was it . . . .?