What a trip through history this week of writing has been -- the Berlin and Cuban Crises, the Cold War, JFK's assassination (on Pell's 45th birthday), all of which is grim. Fallout shelters and duck-and-cover, which I remember from when I was a kid, were very unsettling. And then there was the Vietnam War.
But the '60s were also a time of great hope, especially as the decade wore on. Pell played a large role in that -- he was an optimist by nature -- and one of his lasting contributions to the greatness of what the human spirit can be was in his critical role in establishing the National Endowment for the Arts, and also the Humanities. Am writing that passage now, and came across this great quote from LBJ at the 1965 swearing-in of the members of the new National Council on the Arts:
“I believe that a world of creation and thought is at the very core of civilization and that our civilization will largely survive in the works of our creations. That quality, as I have said many times before, confirms the faith that our common hope may be much more enduring than our conflicting hostilities, and I want that each hour of the things that we do will be enduring. Right now, the men of affairs are struggling to catch up with the insights of great art. The stakes may very well be the survival of our entire society.”
The photo is Pell with the president at about that time.
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