“It’s so infantilizing to be sick,” says Jerome Groopman. He speaks with authority, having been a hospital patient himself, and also a doctor who treats people with life-threatening diseases.

Of the patient’s attitude, he observes: “You look for a parent to sweep you up and make it all better.” But your physician cannot be that parent, he would add, if only because the doctor is not infallible.

Dr. Groopman recently spoke at a symposium in a new series co-sponsored by Boston College and the Atlantic Monthly. This first forum bore the title “The Challenge of Medical Knowledge” and also featured Sherwin Nuland, a surgeon from Yale University and author of “How We Die,” among other publications.

This initiative of the Jesuit university and the Boston-based periodical has taken its inspiration from Cardinal Carlo Martini, the archbishop of Milan. His public discussions in the cathedral of that city have attracted thousands of people, especially the young. Following that lead, the Boston symposium has taken the overall title, “Belief and Non-Belief in Modern American Culture.”

Here, rather than focusing on the faith issues directly, I will emphasize what these two well-known physicians said about the practice of medicine. Both were insistent on the need to change attitudes both in doctors themselves and in the patients who approach them.

“As a patient, it’s critical to understand the fallibility of the doctor,” Groopman said. Nuland want even further: “Doctors are not godlike; they require constant affirmation.” He confessed to feeling responsible when patients die: “I always think it’s my fault.”

Dr. Groopman sees the root cause of physician self-worship as what he called “this tremendous intoxication with power.”

To illustrate this mind-set he told an old joke that goes somewhat like this: The place is heaven’s gate where a lot of saintly people are waiting to get in. St. Peter is checking credentials. Then a guy with a white coat and a stethoscope walks right by and passes through the gate. “What gives?” asks someone disturbed at this sight. St. Peter answers, “Don’t worry, that’s God. He thinks he’s a doctor.”

Dr. Nuland uses a World War II reference to talk about the same phenomenon, calling it “the Spitfire pilot model,” a set of prideful attitudes that take hold even before a student enters medical school and continues, unless corrected. “We have to fight our own instincts,” he says.

Physicians need more introspection, he adds, quoting the poet Auden who said that doctors are the least introspective of professionals. Nuland says that they need to look themselves square in the eye and ask themselves what their motives really are.

Nuland also sees physician attitudes as rooted in their privileged place in society. About this he does not mince words: “We become much more conservative once we become doctors. We become narrowed. Most people in my generation were brought up to be bigots.”

On this last point, he advises doctors, “Recognize the bigot in yourself.”

If all of this sounds ominous, both physicians agree that things are getting better. Nuland attributes much of this change to the benefits of the women’s movement. “There isn’t a doctor who hasn’t learned from patients,” he observes.

And Groopman, drawing inspiration from his Jewish tradition, finds reinforcement from what that tradition says about idolatry as the worship of self.  The dangers of egoism loom large in some of the rabbinic literature.

These two prominent doctors convincingly make the case for continued change in their profession , making it more responsive to patient needs. Much of what they say clearly has the ring of truth.

However, it may be important to place their opinions in context. Both these doctors work in academic medical settings where they can presumably choose their own patients and find time for reflection. As writers, they also know how to use words effectively, a skill that sometimes leads them into rhetoric that does not ring true. What they say sounds awfully good, but does it express reality?

If you asked my primary care physician if she feels like God, I suspect her response would be laughter. Instead, working for an HMO and keeping up with a heavy patient load, she is too busy to act divine. The press of her daily schedule, the need to keep track of patient records, and the effort to stay in touch with new knowledge and other professional requirements must constantly remind her that she is no more than human.

Yes, physicians still rank among the most privileged people in American society. But they are often deeply disturbed about their own profession. Many of them chafe at  the red tape and bureaucratic interference which they have to endure these days. They often need and deserve more moral support than the system will ever give them.

These constraints, along with the awareness of limits in their ability to heal, make many doctors, if not most, only too conscious that they are not God.

Richard Griffin

Barbara Washburn and Brad Washburn, married sixty years, would be judged dynamic people even if he were not ninety years old and she but four years younger. Keeping up with the energetic repartee between them as I tried to recently, as they talked about their lives, proved a challenge.

The two of them are widely known, with Brad famous throughout the world for his expertise in aerial mapping, among other  things.

When she was a young mother, Barbara became  the first woman to climb Mount McKinley, North America’s tallest peak. “When I got home, Mayor Curley gave me the keys to the city,” she recalls.

Brad first climbed that mountain in 1942, and is the only person to have reached its twenty thousand, three-hundred-and-twenty-foot summit three times.

These adventures are among the many that have marked their life together. They have operated according to an activist  motto formulated by Brad: “If there is something you can do, or think you can do, do it.” To top it off, he quotes Goethe: “Boldness has power and magic in it.”

Now resident at Brookhaven, the continuing care retirement community in Lexington, these energetic partners continue to seize opportunities for new involvement in the larger world. I got acquainted with them during a recent weekend in Portland, Maine where they were giving talks at a conference of business executives. Both the Washburns spoke eloquently about their private life together as well as about their world-wide adventures.

It’s not as if they have not known adversity. “I’ve been recycled three or four times,” says Brad, referring to the triple bypass surgery he underwent in his eighties and a later aneurysm. And Barbara became desperately ill in Katmandu and had to be rushed to a medical center elsewhere for emergency treatment that came just in time.

Experiences like these have led the Washburns to adopt this as a philosophy – “You’ve got to have a sense of humor to get on in life.”

Lightheartedly, Brad attributes his initial interest in mountain climbing to a desire to get rid of an allergy. “Hay fever made me climb Mount Washington,” he claims, and at the top he found none of it.

Beside his reputation as an explorer and intrepid mountaineer, Brad is known as the founder of the Boston Museum of Science and first director, lasting forty-one years in that position. It started in a location in Boston’s Back Bay and was then known as the New England Museum of Natural History.

He takes great pride in the growth of this institution from its modest beginnings. When he started, the museum had a budget of forty-four thousand dollars. Now it boasts a budget of thirty-nine million and attracts 1.6 million visitors a year.

He first met Barbara when she applied for a job as his secretary. Before taking the job, she was convinced she could get something better. Brad, struck by her personality, had to call her for fourteen straight days before she finally agreed to it.

On her first day at work, she recalls, the great zeppelin, the Hindenburg, sailed over Boston. That was in 1937 and this airship was on the way to Lakehurst, New Jersey, where a spectacular fire would destroy it.

At the Portland conference, Brad showed slides of the splendid aerial photographs for which he is famous. He has flown over the tallest peaks on earth and made records of them much prized by geographers and other scientists. He is remarkably skilled at this art as well as courageous enough to explore forbidding heights. He boasts of having made 697 helicopter landings in the Grand Canyon.

I found these two elder adventurers not only dynamic personalities, but also people glad to share their experience with others. At the conference, they took obvious pleasure in talking with those younger than they, and joining in their social events.

Though their level of activity does not involve the risk-taking it once did, they remain vitally interested in life around them. Their minds are well stocked with the adventures of a long life together, a storehouse from which they draw readily for the benefit of others as well as their own enjoyment.

Over the years, they have received much attention in the media. As far back as 1947 Brad made a movie for RKO and their exploits have been documented in many other formats. But again, they do not seem spoiled by all the publicity. Instead, they keep at their projects, Brad writing and taking care of his mountains, Barbara playing vigorous tennis and taking long walks.

They have managed not only to remain married but they give evidence of enjoying one another’s company. The secret of their staying together in marriage? “We did a lot of things together,” they suggest.

That such vigorous people have adjusted to one another’s ways for sixty years attests to remarkable flexibility of character. No wonder conference attenders several decades younger than the Washburns listened to them with fascination as they described their adventures, public and private.

Richard Griffin

The autumn leaves – muted red, pallid yellow, and crisp brown – continue to hold on precariously. One nearby tree when in sunlight still features a large spray gone from bright crimson to a kind of orange red.

Some, though, have already dropped, fallen to earth and ready to enter the ground in the unending cycle of the seasons. Who knows where the time goes?, asks the pop song now become old. We are like the leaves, gifted with a fragile beauty.

Thanksgiving, the New England holiday par excellence, has arrived once more. Old and young prepare to gather around family tables for the feast and renew bonds of affection or, at least, consanguinity. Others in their isolation unfortunately must make do, despite being left out.

My neighborhood comes together each year for a communal meal, cooked by local residents and served forth with festivity. Our school hall brings old and young alike to partake in this ritual of food and greeting. Some enterprising burghers come from other parts of the city, attracted by succulent food and the spirit of our community.

Our immediate neighborhood has much to celebrate, too. A new resident, Peter, was born two weeks ago and now graces our street. He is part of a phalanx of young children who have brought us new life. Their comings and goings offer a welcome spectacle to onlookers: Who could not love the image of the local father who carries his five-year old daughter high on his shoulders as he takes her to school each morning?

We also celebrate the memory of a long-time resident who died a few months ago. A Harvard professor of Buddhist studies, Mas brought to our locale not only diversity but a courtesy and grace that we came to value. The stylish Japanese garden around his home attests to the heritage he shared with us.

Nor can some of us forget Maud, a flamboyant personality now three years departed. Her house, up for sale for many weeks, has been reported bought by newcomers.

The modern Jewish sage, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, once wrote, “Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.”   That sharp-eyed insight provides spiritual power for appreciating Thanksgiving Day. It’s such a favorable time for remembering blessings received throughout long lives.

Letting the memories roll, I review the gifts of the years. Love, clearly the most precious, heads the list, having encompassed me from the beginning. As the great painter and muralist Marc Chagall has said: “In our life there is a single color which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.”

Our Thanksgiving table brings together the family members who, not seen during much of the year, remain cherished. We share a heritage that binds us together through the joys and sufferings experienced as individuals.

Friends galore who stay scattered remain lodged in my affections. Having just celebrated the seventieth birthday of David, based in Philadelphia, I harbor fresh thoughts of his personal gifts. At the Chinese restaurant where some seventy-five of his family and friends came together in his honor, I legitimately claimed the greatest longevity of friendship. We first met in 1949, long before any of his colleagues got to know him.

I also celebrate my privileged place in later life that has allowed me to know so many of my age peers and my seniors. My affections go out to the residents of Cambridge Homes, the assisted living residence where I have come to appreciate people who are aging gracefully and with wisdom and courage. Talking with them gives an added edge to my life.

And I toast the readers who contact me to speak their minds about columns. A Mormon bishop based in Nigeria comes to mind. He emailed me from that once distant part of the world to express appreciation for an article describing a visit to the new temple in Belmont.

Thanksgiving stirs in me the instinct to appreciate all the giftedness of existence. As Rabbi Heschel said, being is blessing and holiness. The fallen leaves are signs of a world full of beauty, ever unstable, ever renewed. They can speak to us of a hope that goes beyond death toward transformation.

A whole lot is wrong with our world, and, with time, some of this wrong gets worse. Perhaps that suggests the need to feel thankful for the many people old and young, who risk much to give the deprived some chance for having reason to give thanks.

I remember my friend Brinton who could avail herself of constant comfort. Instead, she leaves academia and ventures forth into troubled parts of the world to help poor people develop the tools they need to get a fair share of the world’s goods. She will be spending Thanksgiving in South Africa with new friends, in a landscape whose leaves are not brightened by autumn but still display for her the color of love.

Richard Griffin

What are successful business leaders most interested in as they approach middle age? The brief answer to this question is personal change.

At least that’s what I discovered from a group of such leaders recently when they called upon me to consult with them. In advance of our meeting, I had prepared materials about growing older, along with information about the age revolution that is likely to transform American society in the next three decades.

But they focused much more intently on their own careers than I had expected. Several of these company presidents were feeling themselves at a turning point and envisioned the time when they would sell their businesses and set off in a different direction.

To my surprise, these leaders were fascinated by what they read in my own vita. Evidence of the sharp transitions in my career stirred in them questions about how those changes happened. How, they wondered, could I have moved from a long career as a member of a religious order and an ordained priest all the way to living as a layman – as a husband, father, and a person employed in the secular world?

What was the secret to being able to make this leap in middle life? Surely I must have some tips for other people anxious to embrace major life change. One man asked: “What would you, at age 72, say to yourself at age 36 about your own future?”

My answers at our meeting were more halting than this column would suggest. To a large extent the focus on my own life caught me off guard. But since our meeting of a few weeks ago, I have continued to reflect on the questions raised then. Here, then, is an indication of what I would say in response to this inquiry.

One caution, however, deserves mention. The answers that I give here are more rational than the real life process itself was. Looking back, one can analyze the events of life coolly and clearly in a way that is difficult to see them as they are happening. In daily life emotion plays a much larger role than we tend to remember later. As one approaches middle age, elemental forces often drive us forward without our being fully aware of the direction in which they are leading us. At least, that’s the way it was with me.

The first thing I would advise middlers interested in personal change is to write a memoir. A written review of their lives up to the present time usually proves a powerful tool for plotting change. Support for this view came to my attention recently from the Odyssey program at Harvard Business School, an educational approach to mid-career change for which HBS charges $10, 500. Those who enroll are required to write such a memoir.

I found the writing experience enlightening indeed. Writing about my life enabled me to see patterns previously hidden. Review of events both outside and within opened themes and motifs not evident before. As a tool for enhancing self-knowledge, the autobiographical enterprise is uniquely valuable.

Another major influence for me was paying more attention to my dreams. I began the habit of placing a pencil and paper next to my bed so as to write the dreams down before they could escape like fish not securely hooked. Again, I found in these nocturnal adventures symbols and patterns that revealed more of myself.

Closely connected with this opening to imaginative life was a gradual increase in emotional expressiveness. Both my home upbringing and my religious order training had combined to make me rather rigid as a young man. But I later learned to trust friendships with both men and women as the source of a richer affective life. These emotional ties with other people  enabled me to accept change and even seek it out as desirable.

I also allowed external events to have an impact upon my thinking and feeling. Within the church, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) radically changed the way I looked at the spiritual world. So did the turbulence within American society during the latter 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. Mainline institutions entered into crisis in those years and came to seem much less secure.

This kind of social change had the effect of shaking some of my rigid outlooks. So did living in Europe for two years among colleagues and others from different nations. They did not see things the way I did and that variety of thinking helped loosen my approach to the world.

Obviously, these few paragraphs cannot do more than suggest more detailed answers to a far-reaching question. However, they may point the way toward an agenda for men and women to whom personal change has become a priority. Much more needs to be said but these fragments from one person’s experience  may prove helpful as a start.

Richard Griffin

If I were suffering from clinical depression and needed in-patient medical treatment for a short time, my choice would be the newly opened Wyman Center, a geriatric psychiatry unit at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge. A visit last week and an extended conversation with three of the unit’s staff members left me with favorable impressions of the mental health services available there to people over age 65.

Advocates for elders have long complained about the way older people are shortchanged by the mental health care system. In my own family, I remember my mother, when she was still in middle age,  reporting how a psychiatrist told her that she was too old for psychotherapy.

The United States Surgeon General, Dr. David Satcher,  recently issued a report with an extensive chapter to the mental health of older adults. He takes note of the way many older people burdened with depressive symptoms are told that these problems “are to be expected at your age.”  But the Surgeon General rejects this pseudo folk wisdom and insists that the symptoms often indicate disease that can be successfully treated by modern medicine.

Entering the Wyman Center, a visitor  finds the physical space brightly painted and decorated with photos and other attractive objects. A large scheduling board posts the events of each week. Rooms of patients are simple but well equipped and another section features common rooms for social activities and dining.

The medical director, Dr. Joseph D’Afflitti, psychiatric nurse and co-director Rose Netzer, and chief social worker Anthony Piro talked with me at length about their work. What I most liked about the new center is the way these professionals work together in attending to the various needs of their patients.

The center’s publicity says it provides “comprehensive medical services that are integrated into each patient’s individualized care plan.”  This means that psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, physical and occupational therapists, and others attend to whatever can improve the patient’s functioning.

To my satisfaction, team members also feel a concern about spiritual issues. Though a chaplain pays special attention to these questions, she can count on the interest of the other team members as well. As Rose Netzer reports, “We treat patients holistically: we dance with our patients, we sing with our patients, we pray with our patients.”

I labeled “justifiable pride” the staff leaders’ confidence about providing top-of-the-line health care. These professionals obviously care a lot about their patients and work hard to respond to a wide range of needs.

At the same time, they are realistic about the work setting. “I think inpatient hospitalization is hard on patients,” Rose Netzer frankly admits. “It’s very debilitating; you have to see to it that people do not become sicker when they come in. We want people back where they belong and treated there.”

The center staff works cooperatively with other institutions. Nursing homes, for example, benefit from consultation whenever a patient is to return to such residences. Also, of course, they keep the patient’s primary care physician informed about the treatments the center has provided.

Staff members confer extensively with the family members of patients. In this way they provide some “case management” enabling the family to support  the patient after discharge from the hospital. This crucial service can give the healing that has taken place in the hospital a chance to take hold. And staff members will be glad to receive follow-up contact from the patients whom they have discharged.

Jeanette Clough, president and CEO of the hospital, conceived the idea of the Wyman Center. She expresses strong support for its work over the past two months and considers it an important addition to Mt. Auburn’s array of services. Of the center she says, “We hope it will be a real bridge among medication, medical, and psychological issues that will help keep elders functional, in their homes, and enjoying their lives.”

To be eligible for admission to the Wyman Center, a person does not have to live in Cambridge or adjoining towns. People can come from outside of Greater Boston. Financing, however, may be a problem for some. Though the basic source of payment is Medicare, not all health care plans do have arrangements with the center.

At the beginning I mentioned depression as a cause for admittance but there are many other reasons why a person would choose this center. There may be some cognitive problems, for example, issues connected with memory. These problems receive thorough evaluation by the staff, in connection with whatever other health issues may be discovered.

The center boasts easy access at (617) 499-5780, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The admissions coordinator promises to return calls within 10 minutes.

One can hope that this new service represents a move toward greater responsiveness of the mental health system to the needs of older people. Perhaps it can become a model for other institutions so that we elders will be better served.

Richard Griffin

Last month in Tokyo, Saburo Sakai died at age 84. He suffered a fatal heart attack as he reached across a dining room table to shake the hand of an American military officer. This event marked the end of a life spanning most of the twentieth century and one marked by both extraordinary exploits and a later dramatic change of direction.

News reports about Sakai caught my attention because World War II still retains a strong hold on my imagination. Though not a war veteran myself, I followed the battles of WWII with rabid interest as I entered into my teenage years. Like many other Americans of that time, I internalized the negative images of both German and Japanese warriors, especially as they were presented in Hollywood films.

Images of Japanese fighter pilots in particular fascinated me because of their skills and their evil intentions against our military forces. I remember seeing actors portraying them sitting in their Zeros grinning malevolently as they dove on American ships and planes. They did not seem like human beings but rather instruments of the devil and of the evil Japanese emperor.

Sakai was one of those pilots but one whose aerial warfare skills surpassed almost everyone else’s. According to the New York Times obituary to which I am indebted for the information here, he claimed to have shot down 64 planes, starting with aircraft from the Chinese Air Force. On the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he shot down an American P-40 over the Philippines and, in the following month, a B-17, the first American bomber to be downed in the Pacific.

He himself took a bullet in the face from an American torpedo bomber in August of 1942 but he managed to get back to his base in New Guinea, some 500 nautical miles away. In 1983, Sakai met the gunner who hit him, a man named Harry Jones from Nevada. The two of them enjoyed talking with one another, according to a newspaper account of their meeting.

This meeting was one of many he had with his former adversaries. He visited the United States a dozen times and met people with whom he been locked in deadly combat. In doing so, he showed extraordinary flexibility of character, especially considering his upbringing and education.

His family, though poor farmers, claimed kinship with the Samurais, Japan’s warrior class. Sakai was taught a code of conduct called Bushido whereby one learns to live prepared to die. This ideology gave him unyielding motivation in his wartime exploits. It makes more amazing his ability after the war to change his values so sharply. According to a web site article about him, Sakai said that he had not killed any creature, “not even a mosquito,” since stepping out of his Zero at the time of Japan’s surrender.

Religion made a difference for him: the same web site reports that Sakai became a Buddhist acolyte and practiced atonement. He came to see that Japanese leaders, especially the Emperor, had betrayed their trust and he felt that they avoided taking responsibility for their actions.

The transition of the Japanese nation from an enemy country toward close friendship with our country ranks as one of the greatest historical changes in my lifetime. The extent of this change can be gauged from what I confess to be vestigial feelings about Japanese people that I still experience. These feelings never influence my actions; they are purely relics of deep emotions that touched me in those teenage years.

When I encounter Japanese tourists visiting my hometown, I am of course polite to them and reach out to them in welcoming friendship. Enmity toward them left over from the war is not something that I have to struggle against.

And yet, I sometimes spontaneously fantasize about them as adult children and grandchildren of men who savagely warred against Americans and the people of other nations as well. The memory of crimes that Japanese forces committed against others is lodged deeply within me, having fed my young imagination.

But I do not have to be defensive about these imaginings; rather they witness to how far we have come to our friendship. The passage was from acute resentment to one of mutual respect and harmony. It ranks as a triumph of human capacity for change for the values that dignify us all.

By his extraordinary ability to change radically, Saburo Sakai is representative of many more citizens of his nation who were able, in middle age and later, to turn from warmaking to peacemaking. From having been military heroes, some of them, they led the way toward becoming heroes of peace.

And so are Americans veterans of WWII who long ago also changed into exemplars of peace and reconciliation. They too deserve widespread appreciation for having accepted former enemies as fellow citizens of the world and even friends.

Richard Griffin

On the morning of June 7, 1968, I heard the shocking news. For the third time in the same decade, a national leader had been shot and killed. Only two months previously, Martin Luther King had been assassinated; that killing had come but five years after the shooting of the president, John F. Kennedy.

To me it came as a blow to discover that Bobby Kennedy was the victim this time, felled in the basement of a Los Angeles hotel by a gunman who had an odd, repetitious name. The murder of this 42-year-old leader struck me, and everyone else I knew, as a blow not only against us but against the nation itself.

I remember feeling a vivid sense of dislocation, a deep uneasiness about the future of our country. American society seemed to be coming apart, rent by violence and unsure of its destiny. Never before had I experienced such widely shared feelings of disorientation.

To me, by the late 1960s, Robert Kennedy carried the hope of bringing the Vietnam War to an end and, at home, furthering the struggle for justice and peace, on behalf of minority citizens. His evident zeal for such values made me root for the success of his presidential campaign that had just scored an impressive victory in the California Democratic primary.

All of this public and private history came rushing back recently when I heard a talk by Evan Thomas, the author of a new book rather prosaically entitled “Robert Kennedy: His Life.” Thomas, an editor at Newsweek,  began by saying that anyone who writes about RFK must deal with two myths: the “good Bobby” and the “bad Bobby.” About these myths Thomas said, “Both are true, often at the same time.”

Bobby was a very different type from his brother Jack, the author emphasized. He had a strong streak of Puritanism in him and he was “a striver, a fighter, a digger.” In the Kennedy family, Bobby ranked far below the golden trio of Joe, Kathleen, and Jack. Even by the time  Jack became president, the two brothers were not close friends: only once during this period did Jack come to visit at Hickory Hill, Bobby’s home. Only after the Cuban Missile Crisis did a strong bond develop between them.

RFK felt crushed by Jack’s death, especially because he suspected that he had caused it by antagonizing the Mob and Castro. Never did he believe the findings of the Warren Commission that a single gunman acting on his own had done the horrible deed.

He also experienced a crisis in his faith: how could God allow this to happen? The search for answers drove him to read the classical Greek philosophers and dramatists and he became fascinated with the notion of  “hubris,” the pride that drives human beings to often fatal achievement.

An important point in RFK’s career came when he visited South Africa in 1966. At that time, it was dangerous for a foreign politician to go there but Bobby ignored the danger and gave hope to the oppressed black people of that country. They surged around him as he stood on top of cars to speak. Thomas quotes Margaret Marshall, then a white lawyer in South Africa,  now Chief Justice of  Massachusetts’ Supreme Judicial Court: “He reminded me that we were not alone; he put us back into the great sweep of history.”

Evan Thomas admits to admiring Bobby. In reviewing his life, the author was most surprised by RFK’s courage. He was driven, his hands shook, he was often afraid but nonetheless he dared face the worst. Many advisors told him not to run for president, partly because of the danger of getting shot, but he was a fatalist about that peril.

Though I never met the man, I do remember seeing him play football for Harvard. Noting how small he was, I saw his courage then, in putting on a uniform and competing against players much bigger and stronger.

Other reasons for the author’s admiration are RFK’s achievements. During the thirteen fateful days of  the Cuban missile crisis, Bobby had a major influence on his brother’s decisions. “His initial impulses were terrible, he wanted to stage a provocation,” Thomas said, “but then he best captured a balanced response.” That meant keeping the pressure on the Soviets but giving them the chance to back out.

The other area of RFK’s accomplishment was the civil rights struggle. According to the author, for RFK to oppose segregation “took political guts” because the south was the backbone of the Democratic party.

Such achievements serve to keep alive the might-have-beens that many Americans of my age still fantasize about. If he had been spared deadly violence himself, could RFK have led the nation toward a resolution of the ugly mess in Vietnam a lot sooner than his successor leaders did? Could he have brought his idealism and spiritual vision to bear on our society to the benefit of all?

Richard Griffin