Show Sr - 'r JL - - "'i " tty Jpr iitSSm ii Edgar Hoover Last farewells Ml 1 I Let Me Be IReumeflEsbered By f Edgar Hoover for Family Weekly fortunate people can look the path to youth or and say with unshakable certainty that a particular incident altered their lives or that the words of a dear friend or loved teacher served as a challenge to crystallize ambition No such exploding suns blaze on the horizons of my memory Nor can I measure in any specific degree the exact influence of the many forces that undoubtedly had tremendous impact on my early life Home school church friends activitics-th- ey all merge in a kaleidoscope of memory Only a few days ago answering a letter in which I was asked to note the things that influenced me most I sought to analyze my past and to measure the incidents that affected my future It was impossible 1 found myself recounting memories in terms of questions How indeed do you record the atmosphere of a home? How measure the influence of loved and loving parents? How judge the hours spent with growing things while working in a sunny fenced-i- n garden? How measure sandlot games of baseball? Delivering nickle-a-tr- ip market baskets for Saturday shoppers? Stalking wooded ravines Some ‘'When Earlier this year Family Weekly asked FBI Director J Edgar Hoover to write about who and what had most influenced his life This article arrived in our editorial offices a matter of days before Mr Hoover’s death —The Editors with La Longue Carabine or Daniel the Boone or Davy Crockett-un- til sinister rustle of moccasins heralding the approach of an enemy resolved itself into a small questing Airedale with bright button eyes? Hnw do you weigh the privilege of attending Central High School? Or the crosstown hike redaily three-mil-e attain that to privilege? By what quired standard can one judge the challenge of debate? Counting cadence with Company A? Memorizing reams of poetry proverbs speeches and statements? Working out for track? These things do not lend themselves more than does the to measure-a- ny human soul I heard a prominent Mason speak recently on the problems confronting the US He indicated that while we Americans have been gorging ourselves on the achievements of science we have starved our souls Is it not possible that many of today's problems stem from just that fact? Alexis de tells us that “Unbelief is an accident and faith is the only permanent state of mankind" Well faith was a living thing in our home We said grace before meals We read the Bible around a lamplit table Too-quevil- ' We learned the Ten Commandments We went to Sunday school and to church and I even sang in the choir at the Church of the Reformation Indeed it was through a pastor that I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life When Dr Donald Campbell MacLeod came to the Washington DC area with his bride I was four years old I was in my teens when he left Memory does not tell me exactly where or when the young Presbyterian minister first came into my ken as the law enforcement and protection Scots would say but I think it must “Proper against subversion" writes Mr Hoovsr have been on a vacant lot For when I In thh (Inal artfeto “depend on Informa-“o- n not vlgHantlm” remember Donald MacLeod I see him not as his portrait shows him— a mature man with a twinkle in his eyes— but as pired And there was nothing slipshod an exuberant young man who made in his decisions When Donald MacLeod was on the diamond you played my Saturdays a joyous memory Donald Campbell MacLeod most by the rules you played fair and you came away with a code of good sportsdefinitely was not the “dour Scot” of legend He was a vigorous forthright manship Calvinist whose rigorous sense of duty As I look back now through a haze and clear-cview of right and wrong of memories it is clear that this young did nothing to suppress his sense of minister must have been my ideal of humor or his joy in life His Saturday manhood I wanted to become a minis- “bail ter I did become a member of the First appearance at our makeshift park” was an occasion for rejoicing Presbyterian Church Dr MacLeod'! When we were shorthanded he played church I also learned a code of conWhen we had enough players he um- duct All of us who played in those ut I Think of Courage I Think of These Americans! tvs Eddie Rlckonbaekor Shortly before his death Mr Hoover was asked to name the most courageous men he had ever known This is what he wrote: i Mamie Eteentiowor the walls of the reception room to my office portraits of two uncommonly courageous men — assistant FBI director P E “Sam" Foxworth and Inspector Samuel C'owlcy— and 23 special agents of the FBI draw my silent tribute each morning They proved their courage with On VSY General Bradley gg i CM K Billy Graham their lives More than 700 police officers in the decade just past— brothers in also died as result of courage-ha- ve criminal action because they believed we must serve our fcllowman Courage is a human quality found often in the American character as an ingredient almost a prerequisite of “Jersey Joe" Walcott 172 - Dr Roger Williams daily life The tradition has been pres ent from our beginnings as a nation Among those whom I would singl out as as exemplars of the way couragi is present when men do whatever ha to be done in the discharge of duty arc men of unprcc Tho astronaute-a- ll edented skill and courage Reprinted by permission of “Today's Health" copyright March 1972 FAMILY WEEKLY July IS as a — |