The Day Hope Won

5 Moments Worth Remembering

By Pandora Poikilos
There is a word tucked away in our vocabulary that has such immense power, it's
always surprising us. It can have world leaders on their feet for hours in a day
in the sun, it can have celebrities dipping their hands in oil or pushing their
way through rubble, it has normal people like you and me giving someone else a
smile, even a tired one no matter how rotten our day may seem and most of all, i
t has the power to make the difference between giving up and moving forward. Wha
t is this word? It's called, H-O-P-E.
I have made many posts on this, some my own and others that I've felt compelled
to share. The following may be incidents that we have been very blessed and fort
unate to have avoided in our lifetimes, but it doesn't make them less true. Some
were started with the worst of intentions in mind but in the end has brought ou
t of the best of people. There is a saying - There are three versions to every s
tory. Mine, his and the truth. So, while I will not politically debate each inci
dent in length, let's take it for the moment we will remember them for, when hop
e won.
Marching For Peace
In the heat of all that the Irish Republican Army did, one incident stands out e
ven more than the rest. On 10 August 1976, an Irish Republican Army (IRA) getawa
y car was desperate to escape a British Army patrol car who was even more adaman
t, that the IRA car will not succeed in making its get away. Three children, Joa
nne Maguire (aged 9), John Maguire (aged 3) and Andrew Maguire (aged 6 weeks) di
ed as a result of this exchange. Their mother, Anne Maguire would never be able
to overcome this incident and would later commit suicide.
Her sister, Mairead Maguire, alongside Betty Williams who witnessed the incident
responded to this violent act by organising a peace march attended by 10,000 Pr
otestant and Catholic women to the graves of the Maguire children. M embers of t
he IRA disrupt the march and hurled insults at the participants accusing them of
being influenced by the British.
They retaliated by organising another peace march the following week. This time,
35,000 people marched with Mairead Maguire and Betty Williams demanding that vi
olence be stopped at all costs in their country. This peace march would in turn
be the spark for many other peace demonstrations and would also function as the
turning point for both women being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1976.
Men Do Not Think
Apparently, that's what Adolf Hitler was counting on as he set about his Campaig
n of Hate and said (in full), â How fortunate for leaders that men do not think.â In spa
king a war that killed approximately 70 million people, Hitler has a strong foot
hold in the memories of many as the most hated man in the world. He used his 'le
adership' to carry out crimes as heinous as starving people to death, using huma
n skin to make lamp shades and making people feel that death of any kind would b
e a better option than to be alive within his reach.
As troops fought hard to stay alive and win a war that so few saw any point in,
there was a moment in time when all appeared to be lost. The German army had cut
off troop movement towards France. Winston Churchill regarded this as one of th
e greatest military defeats of time. With very little maneuvering space availabl
e, between 26 May and 4 June 1940, Operation Dynamo fell into place. More than 3
38,000 British and French soldiers, who were trapped on the beaches at Dunkirk,
France would need to be rescued. While the army went all out to do their part, i
t was the 700 private boats that sailed from Ramsgate in England to Dunkirk that
created a sensation. They sailed back and forth, scooping up the wounded, dodgi
ng air bombs and braving night sails. The event would later be referred to as, t
he Little Ships Of Dunkirk but carried it with it the very emblem of war, leave
no man behind.
The much sought after surrender of Germany and the beginning of the end of World
War 2 came from the surrender of Germany's Axis powers on 7 May 1945 to Western
Allies and to the Soviet Union on 8 May 1945 about a week after Adolf Hitler co
mmitted suicide. In Asia, Japan managed to hold ground for a few more months res
ulting in yet another one of the deadliest events when nuclear bombs were ordere
d to be dropped on Hiroshima (6 August 1945) and Nagasaki (9 August 1945).On 2 S
eptember 1945, General Yoshijiro Umezu signed surrender documents aboard the bat
tleship USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. World War 2 was officially declared over by P
resident Truman 31 December 1946.
The Wall That Come Tumbling Down
On the evening of 8 November 1989, after a much anticipated international press
conference, an announcement on television was made that East Germans would be al
lowed to travel abroad freely. No date was given of when this would come into ef
fect but this served as enough confirmation that unification was much closer tha
n ever before.
For 28 years, the Berlin Wall had become an international symbol not only of a d
ivided country but one of divided families, as well. Having stemmed from the def
eat of the Nazis in World War 2, the Soviet control of East Berlin blocking out
the West and the fleeing of approximately 3 million East Germans to the West in
1953, the Berlin Wall was built on a sentiment that can be likened to - this is
mine, and no one else can have it.
Through the night of 8 November 1989, as continual throngs of people gathered at
Unter den Linden in East Berlin, guards were at a loss of how to react. People
were demanding that it had become their 'right' to go into West Berlin. Guards a
ttempted crowd control with little rubber stamps on passports but soon gave up a
s the crowds intensified. As the crowd broke free, so did the wall's foundations
. The Berlin Wall came tumbling down on the midnight of 9 November 1989, althoug
h it was officially demolished on 13 June 1990.
I Have A Dream
On 28 August 1963, on the steps at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, Martin
Luther King Jr. said, "I am happy to join with you today in what will go down i
n history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation
." This would be the beginning of his infamous speech, "I Have A Dream". One of
the most compelling statements in this speech is the line, "We cannot be satisfi
ed as long as a colored person in Mississippi cannot vote and a colored person i
n New York believes he has nothing for which to vote."
This dream, one he would never live to see, came to pass on 20 January 2009 when
Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th president of the United States. The first
African-American to be in such a position. What's the big deal? In a society th
at is now so culturally mixed, so culturally coloured and flourishes on diversit
y Barack Obama may have seemed to some as just another presidential candidate wh
o had the right components to win his seat at the White House.
To many others, it was a representation of a fight for rights that started centu
ries ago. A fight that won a small step forward in 1865 with the abolition of sl
avery and and an even bigger step forward when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was
passed which bans discrimination because of a person's color, race, national ori
gin, religion, or sex. The rights of this law includes a person's right to seek
employment, vote and use hotels, parks, restaurants and other public places.
I Sat With God And The Devil
While the Chilean miners who were trapped for 69 days need no introduction, I fo
und their level of faith, a force to be reckoned with. It was obvious they belie
ved in God when one rescued miner said, "I sat with God and the Devil. God won."
But it was the inner strength they had in themselves, their strong belief in th
e people striving for their rescue and the love that they had for their families
that will have you questioning, if you have anything close to that amount?
Miners, the people we so often interpret in our heads as barely educated, low in
come people who do a task that we do not see as important. And yet, they have ac
hieved a feat that has NASA talking about them. If this was a lesson to prove pe
rsistence, it was even more of a lesson to teach humility. To show the world tha
t everybody plays a role, big and small and no task is unimportant. It proved th
at you may have a nation's leader waiting to shake your hand but it'll be the em
braces of your family that is the most important gesture to you.
It is easy to get caught up in the usual overload of information that news chann
els will insist on giving us when one particular issue is so heated up. But if y
ou ever need to remember a lesson in humility and never giving up, then remember
this - on 5 August 2010, 33 Chilean miners were trapped approximately 700 metre
s underground in a small copper-and-gold mine. It is only on 22 August 2010, whe
n a drill attempting to locate the miners comes back with a note that says, "The
33 of us in the shelter are well." Remember that line for as long as you can. 1
7 days, trapped with no one knowing if they are alive or dead, with limited reso
urces to food and water, they say - "we are well."
Hope may not be the ultimate answer to our problems and it may not even be the e
nd of our journey. In some cases, it opens a door to yet another journey with ev
en more questions and daunting tasks. But it is a sense of freedom that we can g
ive ourselves to become free from worry, to become free of 'excess emotional bag
gage' and most of all to become free to keep moving forward in our lives. In the
words of Martin Luther King Jr, "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty
, we are free at last.