I was not a friend of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. I had a brief, one-day experience with him. It was an important day for me.
Several years ago, I received an invitation to speak at Jesse Jackson’s church.
At first, I was ambivalent because I had a negative feeling about him. I remembered that he had long ago referred to New York City as “hymietown.” That was blatantly anti-Semitic, and it made me think of him as bigoted against Jews.
But I was interested in meeting him so I accepted the invitation.
When I arrived at his church in Chicago, the congregants were engaged in prayer.
An assistant brought me to meet Rev. Jackson, and he greeted me enthusiastically and warmly.
About 30 minutes later, he invited me to the pulpit to speak. I spoke for about 30 minutes and talked about the threat to privatize public schools and the importance of public schools. His congregation listened intently and applauded the message.
Then Rev. Jackson took me under his wing. He walked me around, introduced me to people, walked me to the meal in the churchyard, filled my plate, and sat to talk with me.
I felt enveloped in his warmth and kindness.
That night, he took me to dinner at a celebrated Chicago steakhouse along with some of his associates and one of his sons. In the hubbub of the restaurant, I strained to hear what he was saying. He spoke so low that I didn’t understand most of what he said. What pearls of wisdom was I missing, I wondered. I would never find out.
But by the time I left, I felt a genuine love for this man.
He was kind, thoughtful, generous, and warm. The people around him basked in his warmth. Briefly, so did I.
Julian Vasquez Heilig watched the half-time performance of Bad Bunny at the NFL’s Suprrbowl and was moved to tears.
Here is why:
Some of us watched the halftime show and cried. Others changed the channel. That difference tells you everything.
If you were scrolling through Facebook or other media after the Super Bowl, what you saw depended entirely on your sphere of inclusion. Some timelines were full of joy, pride, and tears. Others filled instantly with the familiar chorus: worst halftime show ever, too political, too foreign, controversial, divisive, not for “real Americans.” Algorithms did what they always do, amplifying outrage in some spaces and celebration in others.
What struck me most wasn’t the criticism itself, but how ready so many were to dismiss what they hadn’t even tried to feel, while others were overwhelmed by recognition. For many Latino viewers, that split wasn’t shocking at all, because it echoed a lifetime of us being told we belong in some rooms but not others, sometimes whispered, sometimes shouted, often disguised as concern, taste, or tradition.
What made this rejection cut deeper is that it didn’t begin after the performance ended. It began weeks before the game, when commentators openly questioned whether this show would “connect,” a word that so often means conform, flatten, or assimilate. No one ever wondered aloud whether Kid Rock was American enough, even when his music is built on grievance, exclusion, and nostalgia for a past that never belonged to everyone. His belonging was assumed. His presence never put on trial.
At the same time, Latino culture was quietly framed as foreign, no matter how many generations it has lived here, worked here, fought here, and died here. Our music was treated like a visitor, our language like an interruption, our joy like something that needed justification. The stage was never neutral. The judgment was never waiting for the music. It had already been made, long before the lights came up. But what unfolded on that field at the Super Bowl refused to ask for permission.
So let’s talk about what I noticed.
Sugarcane as the Opening Wound
Bad Bunny did not open with spectacle. He opened with a field covered in sugarcane, not just a backdrop, but a world presented on the field. The plants stood tall, swaying as if carried by an unseen breeze, but what most people didn’t realize in the moment is that nearly 400 humans were carefully costumed as sugarcane, blending into the scene with astonishing precision. Tall. Quiet. Unflinching. Heavy with memory. Sugarcane is how so many people of color came to the Caribbean, through chains and colonial economies that fed empires while consuming lives. It is the crop that reordered entire islands around extraction, turning land into profit and people into labor, and normalizing suffering as an economic necessity.
In Puerto Rico, sugarcane marks the moment when native Taíno worlds were shattered, not faded, not replaced, but violently erased. Declared “extinct,” even as their descendants lived on in bodies, in words, in bloodlines history tried to deny. To begin with sugarcane was to begin with truth instead of fantasy. It was to say our joy has a history, and that history was paid for with survival, endurance, and refusal to disappear.
From Fields to the Streets
The performance moved from the sugarcane fields into a different kind of economy altogether. From the fields into the cultural economy of the streets. Tacos on griddles, fruit drinks poured by hand, small businesses that exist because families willed them into being to suppor their families. What once took everything now gave way to spaces that feed people and keep memory alive through work that is chosen, not imposed. It was a quiet but powerful shift, from wealth taken to culture made, from plantations to livelihoods, from what was stolen to what was built and shared.
The Casita
From extraction to shelter. From labor to life. From history imposed to culture chosen. The Casita was not nostalgia placed on the field for sentiment. It was survival made visible, a place where memory rests without apology. I recognized it instantly because The Casita is a central feature of Bad Bunny’s current DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS world tour, and I saw it myself at his concert in Mexico City in December 2025.
When it appears during the concert and now the Super Bowl, the entire feeling of the space changes. The arena stops feeling like something meant to be consumed and starts feeling like a neighborhood gathering, like a block party where everyone knows why they’re there. Ricky Martin, Jessica Alba, Karol G and Cardi B and Pedro Pasqual were spotted on The Casita porch at the Super Bowl. For a song, the focus shifted inward, toward intimacy, memory, and shared recognition rather than outward toward scale or spectacle.
Familia Without Age Limits
Then there was a wedding, and everything softened. Children stood beside elders, small hands near hands worn smooth by time. Adults moved between them, linking generations without needing to explain why. No one was ornamental. No one was hidden or pushed to the margins. This was not a beauty showcase designed for perfection and polish. It was a life showcase: messy, intimate, and unmistakably real.
After the vows a salsa performance broke out in the wedding party. In Latino culture, dance moves through generations like inheritance, passed the way names and recipes are passed. Young people hear rhythm before they speak, absorbing belonging before language. Grandparents hum songs older than memory, melodies tied to places they left, places they carry, places that never really let them go. Teenagers take those sounds and bend them toward the future, making something new without breaking what came before. When that wedding appeared on the field, it wasn’t spectacle. It was continuity. It was culture saying, softly but firmly, we are still here together, and we are not done loving.
Spanish Without Apology
Bad Bunny sung and spoke Spanish the entire performance. He did not translate. The screen did not translate either. In fact, my TV screen didnt even get the Spanish lyrics right. And still, the message landed. For Latino families, this moment felt deeply familiar, because they translate everything else every day. At school. At work. In hospitals. In courtrooms. In moments where clarity is demanded of us but rarely offered in return.
This time, the burden was not on us. It wasn’t defiance. It was dignity. It was a reminder that our language does not need permission to exist, and that when language is treated as a threat, the issue is not understanding. It is whose comfort has been prioritized for far too long.
Bad Bunny at the Album of the Year grammy
Then Bad Bunny paused one of the biggest stages in the world to do something profoundly delicate and human. In the middle of a performance steeped in Latino/a history, memory, and pride, he handed one of his recently won Grammy Awards to a five-year-old child actor. The gesture was quiet, unhurried, and unmistakably intentional. It was meant to represent a younger version of himself, but it also reached far beyond biography. In that moment, the Grammy became a symbol of possibility placed gently in the hands of the future.
For many watching, that was the first moment the tears came. Not because it was sentimental, but because it felt like restoration. In communities where so much has been taken—land, labor, language, and often the right to dream publicly—the act of handing something earned to a child carried enormous weight. It said that success does not have to end with one generation, that recognition can be shared, and that pride can be inherited.
When the Flags Rose
And then it happened. The moment that broke something open. Flags from across the Americas rose, and the field turned into a family reunion. Bad Bunny spoke the names of them all. Music, movement, and memory collided in a fiesta on a field, joy too big to hold only 100 yards of field. You could feel it traveling living room to living room, chest to chest.
This wasn’t spectacle. It was release. It was the sound of people recognizing themselves all at once, across borders, accents, and histories that have always been connected.
Daring and Well Executed
Some viewers said they didn’t understand what was being said. That, in itself, is a statement about whose histories we teach and whose we erase in this nation. Nothing about this performance was accidental. It was layered, intentional, and deeply rooted in memory, lineage, and love.
So no, this wasn’t the safest halftime show ever, and it certainly wasn’t the worst. It was one of the most daring because it chose truth over comfort and belonging over approval. It trusted that love, memory, and pride could fill a stadium without asking permission.
And for families watching together, something special happened. Memories. Parents thought of grandparents who never saw themselves reflected on this stage. Representation. Children saw peers performing and honored. Wisdom. Elders watched their roles honored.
For a few luminous minutes, the biggest stage in America felt like a home open to everyone, a casa abierta. And when Bad Bunny held out a football and the words appeared—“Together we are America”… it wasn’t a slogan. It was a recognition. Across a record 135,000,000 living rooms and kitchens, across generations gathered on couches and around tables, there may not have been a dry eye at all. There was only the quiet certainty that we are still here, still together, still carrying one another forward—together—on a stage that, for one night, felt unmistakably like the Benito Bowl.
Bad Bunny holds football with message of unity
Julian Vasquez Heilig is a Bad Bunny fan who believes that music is one of the most powerful archives of social truth. A nationally recognized policy scholar and education advocate, he examines culture not as entertainment alone but as a lens through which people understand belonging, resistance, and possibility. From his first encounter with “Vete” in a late-night Puerto Rican lounge at La Concha on Friday, December 6, 2019, to standing inside a packed Mexico City arena during the DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS World Tour, observing how crowd energy, memory, and identity move together, he approaches Bad Bunny’s work with the same curiosity he brings to public policy. For him, these moments are not just concerts or cultural events; they are data points of feeling and meaning, asking the same enduring question that guides his scholarship: What does this moment reveal about who we are, who gets to belong, and who we are becoming together?
Let us be thankful for the good things in our lives. Our families and friends. Health. Food. The blessings of freedom and democracy, which we must defend every day.
Let us think about those who do not enjoy the blessings of family, friends, good health, shelter, and food.
Do what you can to support those less fortunate than yourself. Lend a helping hand at a local community center or church or synagogue or mosque. Support groups that are helping immigrant families who are living in terror, fearful of being kidnapped by ICE.
Remember that it is not normal to have armed military patrolling the streets of our cities. It is not normal to see masked men pepper spraying fellow citizens in the streets. It is not normal to see armed men chasing people on farms, where they are picking the fruits and vegetables on our Thanksgiving table, tackling them, and whisking them away to unknown detention centers.
We don’t have a crisis of too many immigrants. We have a crisis of a do-nothing Congress that has been unable to pass legislation creating a process for honest, hard-working immigrants to have a legal path to citizenship.
We have a crisis of bigotry, of white nationalists who think they can restore a world of white supremacy that has disappeared. Nope, won’t happen. Twenty percent of our population is Hispanic. About 57-58% is Caucasian. Among children 17 and younger, about 49-50% is Caucasian.
Like it or not, our society is diverse. Banning the word “diversity” doesn’t change reality.
We must, all of us, practice kindness. Gratitude. Generosity of spirit.
Former President Barack Obama met the annual honor flight of veterans on Veterans Day. This is a flight full of veterans, all-expenses paid, to visit D.C. and tour memorials to their service.
The veterans on the flight were stunned to see President Obama and hear him on the PA system. He thanked each veteran with a handshake as they left the plane.
The expressions on their faces are priceless.
President Obama didn’t do it for money or to win votes. He wanted to say thank you for your service.
I love and admire Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum. She recently retired as the leader of the nation’s largest LGBT synagogue. She looks 16, but she’s not. She is one of the wisest people I know. She is a fighter for justice and kindness. She is fearless.
Olivia Troye describes the inspiration we all should draw from the life of Jane Goodall. Olivia worked in former Vice President Pence’s office as the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor and also was Vice President Pence’s lead staffer on the White House Coronavirus Task Force. She resigned in August 2020 and became an outspoken critic of Trump.
She posted today:
We are under stress right now in the middle of a government shutdown. I have friends and loved ones being impacted by it, and I know how hard it is to live with that uncertainty. At first, I thought about writing to you about the shutdown, in a sea of what will be countless takes on how people view it and their opinions. But today, I want to sit in the moment and think about Jane. My hope is that, regardless of your politics, as you read this, something in her story inspires you.
The summer after my freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania, I went back home to El Paso. I enrolled in a course at the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP). It was an anthropology class, and that’s where I was first introduced to Jane Goodall. I saw in her a path: a woman who looked beyond boundaries, who gave us permission to ask better questions about who we are. Her story lit a spark in me, showing me that science could be about curiosity, compassion, and courage.
When she arrived at Gombe Stream National Park in 1960, she had no formal scientific training. That, in fact, was part of her gift: she observed without the rigid assumptions of academia. She named the chimpanzees she studied—David Greybeard, Flo, and Fifi—at a time when science insisted on using numbers, not names. She insisted that they were individuals, not objects of study. Her findings were revolutionary: chimpanzees were observed making and using tools, a behavior once thought to be uniquely human. She uncovered their hidden lives, hunting, eating meat, forging bonds, grieving, fighting, and reconciling. They had culture, learned traditions passed from one generation to the next. Those discoveries didn’t just change primatology. They changed how we think about ourselves. The line we had drawn between “human” and “animal” blurred.
From Scientist to Advocate
Jane could have stayed in Gombe forever, her pen and notebooks filling with discoveries. But she chose a more challenging path, the path of turning science into action.
In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute, now a global leader in wildlife protection, community-led conservation, and education. In 1991, she launched Roots & Shoots, a youth-led program that today spans more than 60 countries.
Her vision was holistic: you can’t protect chimpanzees without protecting forests, and you can’t protect forests without working with the people who live there. Through initiatives like the Lake Tanganyika Catchment Reforestation and Education (TACARE) program, she connected reforestation, sustainable agriculture, girls’ education, and microcredit for women.
Looking back, Jane Goodall’s legacy is less about any single discovery and more about the principles that animated her work:
Compassion across species. By naming the chimps, she forced us to see them as beings with personality and agency.
Science as resistance. She challenged orthodoxy, first by documenting tool use, then by refusing to separate science from advocacy.
These were not abstract ideals. They were lessons for a fractured world, lessons that matter urgently now. We need Jane Goodall’s example to guide us.
Today, politicians play shutdown games that harm federal workers and erode agencies while boasting about fiscal responsibility. Science, institutions, and truth have become bargaining chips in the hands of those insulated from the consequences. Even Jane Goodall’s Institute felt this: earlier this year, its Hope Through Action project faced funding cuts from the U.S. government under Donald Trump, despite a $29.5 million pledge over five years.
Goodall’s life reminds us that science isn’t abstract. It is human. It is moral. It is about survival. When we gut research budgets, when we dismiss climate science, when we silence federal experts, we are not saving money; we are burning the future.
“Change happens by listening, then starting a dialogue with the people doing something you don’t believe is right.”
And she forces us to confront a deeper question: Is an animal more our best friend than our neighbor?
In Gombe, she saw chimps grieve, nurture, and protect. They were not “other.” They were kin. In a society that struggles even to see our human neighbors with compassion, her work unsettles us. What does it mean if we can empathize with animals but not with each other? Or perhaps the reverse: if we learn to extend compassion across species, might we relearn it across human divides as well?
When Jane Goodall died at 91 this week, tributes poured in from around the globe. They called her a scientist, a conservationist, a visionary. But her most important title was witness.
She bore witness to the lives of chimpanzees, the destruction of forests, the resilience of communities, and the hope of young people.
So yes, I do worry about government shutdowns. I worry about the erosion of science and the hollowing out of public goods. I worry about the traps laid by political operatives who thrive on chaos. The farther I step from the government, the more clearly I see this reality.
But in dark times, we can choose to be witnesses. We can choose action, compassion, and resistance. And if we do, we honor Jane Goodall’s greatest gift: the reminder that what we do matters. That choice, that courage, is her gift and her legacy to all of us.
Benjamin R. Cremer is pastor at the United Methodist Church in Boise, Idaho. I read his essays regularly. He is truly a Christian. He preaches love, not hate. He knows and tries to exemplify the Beatitudes.
On June 19, 1865—two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed—enslaved Black Americans in Galveston, Texas were finally informed of their freedom. This day, now known as Juneteenth, marks not just the delayed enforcement of a national promise, but the resilient hope and courage of a people who endured unspeakable injustice while still holding onto the belief that liberation would come.
As Christians, we must understand that Juneteenth is not just a historical footnote—it is a call to theological clarity and moral responsibility. Scripture consistently reveals a God who hears the cries of the oppressed (Exodus 3:7), who calls for justice to “roll on like a river” (Amos 5:24), and who sets the captives free (Luke 4:18). The story of God is a story of liberation—not just personal salvation, but also the dismantling of systems that crush the image of God in others.
Juneteenth challenges us to confront a difficult truth: that much of American Christianity was complicit in slavery, and that the legacy of that sin continues in our institutions, our policies, and yes—even in some of our pulpits. But the gospel does not shy away from hard truths. It invites us to repentance. To truth-telling. And to the costly work of reconciliation and repair.
In our time when people are heard saying “Illegal is illegal,” Juneteenth invites us to remember that slavery was once legal. Harboring a fugitive enslaved person was illegal. Black freedom illegal. “Illegal is illegal” has always been used to defend injustice. Legality ≠ morality. Justice calls us higher.This is not about shame. It’s about grace. Grace that tells the truth. Grace that restores what has been broken. Grace that refuses to be silent in the face of injustice.
Observing Juneteenth as Christians means celebrating the faith and dignity of Black Americans who have carried the gospel with courage even when the church failed to. It means honoring the day freedom was announced, and lamenting that it was so long withheld.
May we not be a people who forget. May we be a people who remember rightly, act justly, and walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8).
If you are looking for a tangible way to get involved in communal justice work, I want to let you know about Be Love day, put on by the King Center. Be Love is a growing movement of courageous acts to achieve justice, which is based on these words from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love.” Be Love seeks to strategically define and unleash the true power of love to unite humanity, cultivate true peace, and create the Beloved Community. The movement is holding “Be Love Day” on July 9th. Click the link above to learn more.
Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe asked why Trump and Melania are attending the funeral of Pope Francis, since the two men disagreed about almost everything. He thinks it is Trump’s way of consoling his Catholic base. The Pope and Trump exchanged harsh words. The Pope was a man of faith who called on the faithful to welcome immigrants. Trump hates immigrants. The Pope called for mercy and compassion. All Trump can give is hatred and vitriol.
Cullen writes:
There’s a great scene in “The Godfather,” when all the other Mafia bosses attend Don Corleone’s funeral.
Ostensibly, the Godfather’s rivals are there to show respect, but there’s the unmistakable reality they are not mourning a death so much as relishing an opportunity.
The image of Donald Trump sitting near the body of Pope Francis conjures the image of Don Barzini nodding to Corleone’s family as he calculates in his head how many of Corleone’s soldiers and contacts he can peel off now that the Godfather is dead.
Why, on God’s green earth, would Donald Trump deign to attend Pope Francis’ funeral? To show respect? To mingle with other world leaders? To get his mug on television?
In the aftermath of the pope’s death, Trump was uncharacteristically gracious, posting on social media that Pope Francis was “a very good man.”
Trump called that very good man “disgraceful” in 2016 after the pope dismissed Trump’s proposal to build a wall between the US and Mexico. The pope said that anyone who only thinks about building walls instead of bridges “is not Christian.”
Trump, whose base includes millions of evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, hit back, saying, “For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful.”
For all the kind words he showered on the pope in the immediate aftermath of the pope’s death, it’s hard to imagine Trump disagreed with the less than charitable assessment offered by Roger Stone, the Trump advisor who avoided 40 months in prison after Trump commuted his sentence for lying to Congress to protect Trump.
Stone, displaying the compassion of a viper, said this of the pope: “His papacy was never legitimate and his teachings regularly violated both the Bible and church dogma. I rather think it’s warm where he is right now.”
So gracious.
But, give Stone this much: at least he was honest.
Trump’s platitudes ring hollow indeed. But the death of Pope Francis offers Trump and MAGA Catholics the prospect, however unlikely, of replacing a progressive voice in the Vatican with someone more ideologically in tunewith the more conservative voices within the church in the US.
Either way, Trump, who describes himself as a non-denominational Christian, won the Catholic vote, decisively. The pope’s criticism of Trump when it came to the environment, the poor and especially immigration doesn’t appear to have dissuaded the majority of American Catholics from voting for Trump.
The 9-member US Supreme Court that has been deferential to Trump’s unprecedented claims and exercise of executive power is comprised of six Catholics, only one of whom, Sonia Sotomayor, is liberal and regularly rules against Trump. (You could argue there are six conservative “Catholics” justices, given that Justice Neil Gorsuch, now an Episcopalian, was raised and educated as a Catholic, and voted with the five other conservative Catholic justices to overturn Roe v. Wade.)
Thomas Groome, a professor of theology at Boston College, acknowledges that conservative Catholics in the US have been a boon to Trump, and suspects Trump show of respect to Pope Francis and the institution is keeping with his transactional approach to pretty much everything: that the conclave of cardinals who will elect a new pope will reward Trump with someone who thinks more like him.
Highly unlikely, says Groome.
“Francis appointed about two-thirds of the cardinals who will select his successor,” Groome said. “Trump may be hoping he’ll get a reactionary, a right-wing pope. But I don’t think that will happen.”
Groome said he was more concerned about Trump’s reaction when the president realizes that, following Vatican protocol, he won’t get the best seat in the house at St. Peter’s Basilica.
“My understanding is he’s been assigned to sit in the third row,” Groome said. “He’s not going to like that.”
Still, gripped by Christian charity, and influenced by an enduring belief in redemption, Groome holds onto the remote, infinitesimal chance Donald Trump could, on the way to Rome, have a Road to Damascus conversion, that some of Pope Francis’ empathy could somehow rub off on him.
“St. Paul fell off his horse,” Groome said. “Maybe Donald Trump will, too.”
As you know, Trump took control of The Kennedy Center and named himself chairman of the board. He kicked all Democrats off the board and named Trumpers to replace them.
Some artists cancelled, some continued to perform. Trump’s new director, Richard Grennel, canceled the national tour of a children’s show called “Finn,” because it promoted love, kindness, and tolerance.
A band called Guster was performing at The Kennedy Center on March 29, and the band leader talked about the cancellation of “Finn.” Then he invited the cast of “Finn” to join him onstage and the audience went wild.
In President Joe Biden’s tribute to President Jimmy Carter, there is an implicit contrast with the man who will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States. Just take every self-evident statement about Carter’s integrity, honor, and humanity, and flip it to its opposite extreme. You will have a portrait of 47: a man who never donned the uniform of his country; a man who never did an unselfish act for anyone else; a man whose business career was noted for bankruptcies, thousands of lawsuits, and unpaid bills; a man known for serial lies; a man who has been married three times and cheated on all his wives. A man whose name is synonymous with lying, cheating, greed, and selfishness.
Now, read about the other extreme: a man who devoted his life to his country and service to others. President Jimmy Carter. A man who had a lifelong devotion to his wife. A man who sent his only child Amy to public schools in D.C. when he was President.
President Biden released this statement:
Today, America and the world lost an extraordinary leader, statesman, and humanitarian.
Over six decades, we had the honor of calling Jimmy Carter a dear friend. But, what’s extraordinary about Jimmy Carter, though, is that millions of people throughout America and the world who never met him thought of him as a dear friend as well.
With his compassion and moral clarity, he worked to eradicate disease, forge peace, advance civil rights and human rights, promote free and fair elections, house the homeless, and always advocate for the least among us. He saved, lifted, and changed the lives of people all across the globe.
He was a man of great character and courage, hope and optimism. We will always cherish seeing him and Rosalynn together. The love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism.
We will miss them both dearly, but take solace knowing they are reunited once again and will remain forever in our hearts.
To the entire Carter family, we send our gratitude for sharing them with America and the world. To their staff – from the earliest days to the final ones – we have no doubt that you will continue to do the good works that carry on their legacy.
And to all of the young people in this nation and for anyone in search of what it means to live a life of purpose and meaning – the good life – study Jimmy Carter, a man of principle, faith, and humility. He showed that we are great nation because we are a good people – decent and honorable, courageous and compassionate, humble and strong (love this line).
To honor a great American, I will be ordering an official state funeral to be held in Washington D.C. for James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th President of the United States, 76th Governor of Georgia, Lieutenant of the United States Navy, graduate of the United States Naval Academy, and favorite son of Plains, Georgia, who gave his full life in service to God and country.
Diane Ravitch's blog 