Delight Springs

Saturday, July 12, 2014

John Seigenthaler, 1927-2014

Nashville, journalism, and friends of justice & freedom & integrity & decency & literacy everywhere lost a great man yesterday. So glad I took the time two months ago to write to him, after watching the Shelby Street pedestrian bridge get rechristened in his name.
...I find myself moved to add my thanks for all you've done for so long, for individuals, for your community and nation, for the cause of human freedom and dignity, and for social progress and hope. 
And, thanks again for visiting my ethics & computer ethics classes at Vanderbilt in '06. The door to my MTSU classes is always open to you... Be well.
He'll not be passing through that door again in the flesh, but his tireless energy in service to our species will continue to inspire me every time I do.

Worth another look:

Saturday, May 3, 2014


A bridge to freedom

Local icon and national (as well as personal) hero John Seigenthaler got a fitting and perfectly-symbolic tribute this week: Nashville's Shelby Street pedestrian bridge was renamed and dedicated to honor the man who's done so much for so long for human and civil rights, and for freedom. The First Amendment Center which he founded is a beacon of advocacy and hope, and now it has new company as a civic monument to its founder.

The mayor's right, he's always been a man to extend a saving hand and a man to say Yes. That's what he said when I invited him to speak to my Vanderbilt ethics and computer ethics classes several years ago. I'll never cross that bridge again without grateful appreciation.


Postscript-
If journalism really is the first rough draft of history—the phrase is Philip Graham’s—then it requires at least a few practitioners with an epic sensibility and an appreciation of the possibilities of political life. Seigenthaler had both, for he had played his part in the great American saga of the age and had seen how the world looks to those charged with the responsibility of government. There will be many moments in the coming years when those in Nashville and beyond will wish that they, like the Kennedys, could once more send John Seigenthaler into the fray to seek the truth and protect the powerless—all with a melodious accent and an inescapable sense of the joy of the fight. "John Seigenthaler's Epic Sensibility," Jon Meacham, The New Yorker
Seigenthaler funeral...more... more



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