Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013 • County Footnotes by Jim Chapman

Publisher’s note: This County Footnotes column by Supervisor Jim Chapman originally appeared in the Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2013 edition of the Lassen County Times.

History does matter. The past affects the present and shapes the future. This Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That event changed the course of history.

It changed my life. I was 9 years old, in Mrs. Metcalf’s fourth-grade class at the old Lincoln School. The school janitor, Mr. Delgado, was sitting in the windowsill of the hallway outside Mrs. Metcalf’s class when I left the classroom to use the restroom. He had been crying and when I asked what was wrong, he told me to tell my teacher that President Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. While I knew who Kennedy was, I did not comprehend the significance of his request. I did as he asked and the reaction of my teacher shook the world, as I knew it.

That weekend I ceased being a carefree child and began a purposeful life, fascinated with history, politics and public service. The next 10 years of school prepared me for the life I have today. I knew I wanted to be a politician. Thanks to the passage of the 26th amendment in 1971, lowering the voting age to 18, I was able to participate in my first election in 1972 and vote for the president of the United States.

Forty years ago next month, at the age of 19, I had the temerity to walk into city hall Dec. 10, 1973, and take out papers to run for city council. Despite some who scoffed at the notion someone so young would run for office, I somehow convinced enough voters of my seriousness of purpose to win a seat on the council in March 1974. Two years later, I was elected the mayor of Susanville. The year was 1976, the bicentennial of the United States and the celebration of our nation’s history. I also was elected to the first of nine terms to serve on the Lassen County Board of Supervisors.

Kennedy’s legacy of public service inspired a generation of leaders committed to fiscal responsibility and social justice in our public affairs. “In order to form a more perfect union” was the promise our founding fathers made when establishing our nation. One hundred fifty years ago today, Abraham Lincoln delivered his famous Gettysburg Address and spoke of a nation in strife “and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The hatred and intolerance that tore the nation asunder during the Civil War were still present in our nation during Kennedy’s time. Dallas was the epicenter of hatred in 1963, and it is ironic Kennedy’s death came 100 years and 3 days after Lincoln’s famous address.

Race, religion and partisan politics still threaten our civil discourse today. Extremism and lack of cooperation is as strong today as in Kennedy’s time 50 years ago, or Lincoln’s time 150 years ago. History does matter and if we fail to learn from it, we are doomed to repeat it. For me, the past 50 years has been a journey of discovery that history does matter.