January 13, 2005

  • Hope of Heaven

    “Heaven is a state,
    a sort of metaphysical state.”
    – John O’Hara, Hope of Heaven, 1938

    “The old men know
    when an old man dies.”
    – Ogden Nash

    See also the five Log24 entries
    ending with the 9 PM entry of
    Tuesday, December 10, 2002.

    From today’s New York Times:

    “Joseph S. Frelinghuysen, whose memoir, Passages to Freedom, chronicled
    his escape from a prison camp in Italy during World War II, died on
    Saturday in Morristown, N.J. He was 92.”

    A web page on the Indiantown Gap army camp quotes Frelinghuysen’s Passages to Freedom… He is describing July 1942, just before Frelinghuysen’s unit was sent overseas:

    “In the last week of July, his wife
    Emily came to Indiantown to stay at the old Hershey
    Hotel so they could steal a few of the remaining hours
    together. He explained, ‘On my last night with Emily,
    she wore an evening dress with a full green and rose
    colored skirt, and I put on my best garrison uniform
    …. we had California champagne, lobster, and flaming
    crepes with ice cream. We danced to some old tunes; Cole
    Porter’s ‘Night and Day’ and Irving Berlin’s tunes from
    ‘Top Hat.’ Then they played a new one slowly, and a
    young girl sang the lyrics to ‘The White Cliffs of
    Dover.’ Noting that England had been at war for three
    years, he reminisced that it was a song that speaks of
    ‘love and laughter’ and ‘peace ever after.’
    Nostalgically, he said, ‘We finished the dance in an
    embrace. She took my hand and we walked out through the
    lobby onto the terrace for a last look at the gardens in
    the pale light of a quarter moon.’ “

    “Darkness and light,

    the old man thought.

    It is what every hero legend is about.

    The darkness which is more than death,


    the light which is love….”

    Prince Ombra, quoted here on
    the date of Frelinghuysen’s death,
    Saturday, January 8, 2005.

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