Reflection #17 (Only 1059 to go!): The End of Times

     Do you recognize the name Harold Camping? If not, he is the man who predicted that the world would end on May 21, 2011. Actually, he said that the "rapture" and Judgment Day would be on that date. While I didn't believe that it would happen, I also didn't write my June 1st blog until May 22...just in case.
     Harold seems like a genuinely nice man who truly believed what he predicted. Afterward he expressed embarrassment and apologized for the miscalculation. My thought was, "No apologies necessary; I'm pretty happy that it didn't happen." I think for most of us, life is like a poor restaurant; no matter how bad the food was, the worst complaint is that there wasn't enough. (FYI, he has since had a stroke, as a result of stress that followed his prediction; for that I feel a little sorry for him.)
     Harold's prediction and its failure to materialize prompted this recollection. In October of 1962, we had our own brush with "The End of Times". If  anyone reading this blog is old enough to remember that month, I want to bring you back to the "Cuban Missile Crisis".  I was in my 2nd year of teaching at Saint Ignatius High School...not College Prep.
     The set-up: At the end of World War II, the U.S.A went from being a nervous ally of Russia to being the vanguard against Russia's apparent desire for world domination. For four years, there was a contentious relationship between Russia and the U.S.A., Then one day in Sept. of 1949, we found out that the Russians had “the bomb”. Through the early ‘50’s, there was paranoia, the "red scare", bomb shelters in homes, the Strategic Air Command and, perhaps most terrifying of all, the "Dooms-Day Clock"...always set a couple of minutes before midnight.
     By 1962, the Russians had already launched rockets capable of carrying atomic war-heads long distances, and they were starting to erect them in Cuba, which was the first official Communist country in the western hemisphere. There was no question about their intent. Those rockets could reach every city in the U.S.
     [Me being a smart a--: Luckily, we had mastered the technology of atomic bomb-resistant school desks. In case of a nuclear attack, the students were to get under their desks. We can only imagine how much longer the War-in-the-Pacific would have lasted if the Japanese had developed that technology.]
     The Result: The story is longer and more complex, but toward the end of October, 1962, President Kennedy ordered a blockade of Cuban ports. For seven days, Russian cargoe ships carrying rocket parts approached Cuban waters.  The long-awaited war was at hand. There had been no bill-boards warning us of the end, or radio preachers to tell us how to spend our waning moments, but we all knew we were all going to die. The "Dooms Day Clock" had mere seconds to go. Both sides had enough nuclear weapons to wipe out humanity many times over, and this was it.
     On October 28th, the Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev offered to remove their missiles from Cuba if we would remove ours from Turkey.
     The Ignatius connection: During one of those days, as I was teaching one of my classes, there was a sudden loud "booom" from the direction of the lake. That's it. It's all over. Then we were told that naval pilots were practicing their super-sonic flights over Lake Michigan; it was a so-called sonic-boom. I know that the story sounds like it "fizzles", but, to those of us who experienced it, it was a high-anxiety snap-shot moment that illuminated our mortality.
     Some have said that the reason the good old days were good was because we know that we have survived them. I survived the missile crisis, but I don't feel those days were all that good. At 23-years-old, I wasn't ready to "leave this vale of tears", if you get my drift.  Ya know! At 72, I'm still not ready. As with the poor restaurant, life isn't perfect, but there still hasn't been enough.