Forever Young

Forever Young

One of my favorite songs is “Forever Young” sang by Rod Stewart. I don’t know if he wrote it, but he sings it. There is another song with the same title and theme sang by Bob Dylan. But Stewart’s is my favorite.

May the Good Lord be with you

down every road you roam

And may sunshine and happiness

surround you when you’re far from home

And may you grow to be proud, dignified, and true

And do unto others as you would have done to you

Be courageous and be brave

And in my heart you’ll always stay

Forever young

May good fortune be with you,

may your guiding light be strong

Build a stairway to heaven with a prince or a vagabond

And may you never love in vain

And in my heart you will remain

For ever young

And when you fin’lly fly away I’ll be hopin’

that I served ya well

For all the wisdom of a lifetime no one can ever tell

But whatever road ya choose

I’m right behind you, win or lose

For ever young.

Would it that we could all be forever young. Ponce de Leon begged and persuaded the king of Spain to grant him men and ships to search for the infamous “fountain of youth”. According to myth whoever drank of its water would be forever young. In his unwise quest, he became the European discoverer of Florida, which he named “Pascua de Florida” (feast of flowers) after the Spanish Easter holiday, he landed here on Easter Sunday. He explored the state between 1513 and 1521.

I woke up on the morning of Aug 31 to the terrible news of the death of Princess Diana (August 30, 1997) she was 36. I was stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to think. That kind of things didn’t just happened. For days and weeks there wasn’t any other news but the death of a princess in the prime of her life.

I never read the Diary of Ann Frank. But I saw the movie and I visited the place where her family hid during those terrible years from the Nazis. It was hard to believe that all those people managed to survive in such cramped quarters. She was barely a teenager when she perished in a concentration camp.

When I moved to this country I discovered American TV. That for me meant “Happy Days”, The Three Stooges and The Little Rascals. I even had the opportunity to meet one of The Little Rascals. One of them grew up to become an Adventist pastor. Through the magic of TV they are all children forever.

What can I say about a dozen of movie and rock stars that died young? One day, after a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa, Holly chartered a small plane to get to the next town with some extra time to rest. On the morning of February 3rd, 1959, the plane carrying Buddy Holly, 23, Richard Valenzuela “Ritchie Valens”, 18, and Jay Perry Richardson “the Big Bopper”, 29, took off from Mason City, Iowa, and crashed after eight miles, killing everyone on board.

En route to compete in a race in Salinas, California, James Dean was killed in a highway accident on September 30, 1955. He was 24. Freddie Prinze (1954-1977), was a young, Latino stand-up comic who made people laugh in the popular 1970’s TV sitcom "Chico and the Man." Alas, Freddie shot himself at age 23, adding to the long list of Hollywood stars who died young.

Even Jesus didn’t reach old age.

They will always be young in our memory.

When we came to the DC area, my wife Denise decided to continue her studies and she registered at the University of Maryland. She asked me one day to help her with the registering process. I would stand in the next line so she wouldn’t spend so much time waiting. The system worked. As soon as she finished one line she would come to where I was in line and I would move to the next line. The last step was at the cashier’s. I was getting to the window just in time for Denise to join me with all her paperwork. The cashier looked at me and Denise and took her papers. As I took the check book to pay, and without looking at me, she said, “write your daughters social security number in the check”. We couldn’t hold it and bent over cracking up. As we left the registration area quite a few people were looking a us wondering what was up.

1 Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, "I find no pleasure in them"--