Last year a video appeared on YouTube of the last surviving witness to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Samuel Seymour. At almost age 96 he appeared in 1956 on the CBS quiz show “I’ve Got a Secret,” where he was questioned by celebrity panelists like actress Jayne Meadows, widow to Steve Allen and still alive today at age 94. He had been at Ford’s Theater at age 5 in 1865, hearing the fatal shot and seeing the assassin tumble onto the stage. Naturally he was terrified. He won $80 for appearing on the program and died two months later, perhaps related to having fallen in his New York hotel room before his big appearance.
Obituaries show Seymour died in my hometown of Arlington, Virginia. His funeral was at Mount Olivet United Methodist Church, less than a mile from where I lived, 9 years before my birth, this last witness to one of history’s great crimes now nearly 150 years ago.
It’s powerful to see in video an eyewitness to an event so long ago, enshrouded in the clouds of history, usually recalled only in print or drawings. History passes by so quickly, and witnesses available only a short time. The recent commemorations of the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, once seemingly so recent, featured panels of mostly elderly people. Once not long ago nearly every upper middle aged man was a World War II veteran. Now they are a dwindling number of 90 year olds. Few have first hand memories any more of Pearl Harbor or the Depression.
Nelson Mandela’s death recalls that his release from prison in South Africa was incredibly over 20 years ago. Another notable of that era, Lech Walesa, now age 70, is in Washington, DC this week for a film about his life as a Polish freedom fighter. He jumped over the fence to lead the strike at Gdansk shipyard over 30 years ago. The fall of communism in Eastern Europe, once so unimaginable, occurred 24 years ago, culminating with the execution of the Romanian dictator and his wife on Christmas 1989. It’s hard to believe there are adults today not old enough to remember those tectonic momentous events that triumphantly ended the last century. There are even young adults now with no memory of the more pedestrian incidents of the 1990s, like President Clinton’s sex scandals and impeachment.
Listen to the direct witnesses whenever possible. One of my best experiences was meeting the last surviving U.S. veteran of World War I. I cherish memories my grandparents left me but wish I had asked more. Recently I googled an army badge my grandfather gave me that he had worn in Italy in WWII. It signified he served in the 51st Signal Battalion, of which I had not known. My fault for not asking when I could.
Christmas season recalls that the Christian revelation is composed of writers who professed to be eyewitnesses or who knew the eyewitnesses to the lives of Christ and the Apostles. Their testimony is forever preserved and proclaimed by the universal Church. It’s too bad that actress Jayne Meadows never got to quiz the aged Apostle John on the Island of Patmos. But we can trust that the preserved testimony is safe, trustworthy, transformative, enduring for all time and eternity.
Comment by Dave Gingrich on December 11, 2013 at 9:12 am
To the extent our faith aligns with that of the Apostles, our faith has integrity and power. When our faith diverges from the Apostles, it loses integrity and power,
Comment by Bill Jennings on December 11, 2013 at 7:45 pm
Our justified dependence upon eye-witnesses, beginning with the Apostles, and the documents (Gospels and Letters of the N.T.), truly archeological wonders, exhaustively criticized and analyzed down through the millennia, which came into existence upon their deaths show that our following Jesus is not a blind leap of faith, but reasonable testing of the evidence. It is the REASON for the hope we have (I Peter 3.15).