Martin Luther King, Jr., and the calendar

I think, with some regularity, about the prominence of dates, in our lives. 

During a given year, so many dates stand out--dates with personal, or historical, meaning (and historical dates often feel deeply personal).

There is the date of our own birth; the birth dates of loved ones; wedding anniversaries; the dates when loved ones died.

Today, the 15th of January, is of course the anniversary of Dr. King's birth, in 1929.  Today, had he lived, he would have been 95 years old.

I think of the tremendous burden Dr. King faced, through his years as a public figure: his awareness, ever-present, of the possibility of assassination.

Which, in the end, happened, on April 4th of 1968--when he was shot while standing on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

It is astonishing (and deeply saddening) to remember that Dr. King--one of the most towering figures in America's history--was only 39, at his death.

There are, certainly, many other dates of great significance. 

One thinks of November 22nd.  September 11th.  December 7, 1941.  D-Day, on June 6, 1944.  The death, on June 6, 1968--two months after Dr. King's death--of Senator Kennedy.

February 9, 1964 (sixty years ago next month)--when The Beatles first appeared on Ed Sullivan's program. 

August 8th, 1974:  President Nixon's announcement, in a television speech, that he would resign from office the next day.

Then, dates which are more recent:

January 6, 2021, at the Capitol.

I am unsure how many people remember, specifically, February 24, 2022 as being the date Russia began its war against Ukraine.  I suspect millions of people--beyond the area of Ukraine itself--likely do remember it, and one hopes the date will continue to be kept in mind.

And three months ago: October 7th, when Hamas committed its invasion of Israel--which led, quickly, to the Israel-Hamas war.

In addition to today's anniversary of Dr. King's birth, there is today another anniversary--the date of which I had not recalled, until watching a recent CNN special.  Fifteen years ago--January 15th, 2009--the "Miracle on the Hudson" occurred, when Captain Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River. Everyone on board--155 people--survived. 

Years after the fact--or only weeks, months after the fact--we feel, often with great emotion, the effect and meaning of certain dates.  Our awareness of such dates gives to us (in an evocative, associative way), an ongoing sense of our personal histories--and of national history, world history.  An awareness of the calendar (and all of its particular associations, from both the distant and recent past) becomes, indeed, a significant part of our lives.

An extraordinary role in D-Day

On Tuesday, The New York Times published an obituary of Maureen Flavin Sweeney, who died on December 17th at a nursing home in Belmullet, Ireland.  She was 100 years old.

I had not known of Ms. Sweeney, or of the remarkable role she played during World War Two.

In 1942, as the Times reported, she took a job at the post office of Blacksod Point, an Irish coastal village.  Her name, at the time--she was not yet married--was Maureen Flavin.

The Times wrote that the "remote post office also served as a weather station.  Her duties included recording and transmitting weather data.  She did that work diligently, though she did not even know where her weather reports were going.

"In fact," Times reporter Alex Traub noted, "they were part of the Allied war effort."

Then, in June of 1944, days before the D-Day invasion--originally planned for June 5th--her weather data altered history. "On her 21st birthday, June 3, she had a late-night shift: 12 a.m. to 4 a.m. Checking her barometer, she saw that it registered a rapid drop in pressure, indicating a likelihood of approaching rain or stormy weather."

The Times story continued: 

The report went from Dublin to Dunstable, the town that housed England’s meteorological headquarters.

Ms. Flavin then received an unusual series of calls about her work. A woman with an English accent asked her: “Please check. Please repeat!”

Ms. Flavin asked the postmistress’s son and Blacksod’s lighthouse keeper, Ted Sweeney [whom she would marry in 1946], if she was making a mistake.

“We checked and rechecked, and the figures were the same both times, so we were happy enough,” she later told Ireland’s Eye magazine.

The Times wrote:

That same day, [General] Eisenhower and his advisers were meeting at their base in England. James Stagg, a British military meteorologist, reported that, based on Ms. Flavin’s readings, bad weather was expected. He advised Eisenhower to postpone the invasion by a day.

The general agreed. June 5 saw rough seas, high winds and thick cloud cover. 

D-Day took place on June 6th. "Some commentators," Times reporter Traub wrote, "...have argued that the invasion could well have failed if it had occurred [on June 5th]."

The obituary notes that Ms. Sweeney only learned of the importance of her weather reporting years later, in 1956.

Here is the link to the June 2nd story about her, from the Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/02/world/europe/maureen-sweeney-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.K00.0hPk.RIrpOUcYte3D&smid=url-share