Last summer, I met an amiable older gentlemen who, while restrained when talking about most topics, nearly flew off the handle from time to time, especially when certain subjects were broached. He and I had lunch, always with other people, probably 15 times between June and December of last year.
I remarked once on his behavior to a colleague, who responded that some eccentricity was inevitable, given my lunch companion’s upbringing. This was said with such finality that I didn’t press further. In all, I didn’t think much of it; there are many eccentrics in Washington. Eccentrics and bores and no one else live here.
But reading a few weblogs tonight, it clicked. This gentleman is actually quite well known. And his mother was famous, known to probably every American over forty and many younger than that. Most immediately, it was a middle initial that kept me from knowing who he was; the initial was always used in print, but it was enough to keep separate that printed name and the name of the person whom I knew.
I wonder if there was willful ignorance at play, as well. He’s really that eccentric. Knowing who he is, though, does explain the way that others treat him and his many contacts in the highest levels of governments around the world.
He does have, I now can see, his mother’s stubborness, which leads to his being a life of principles. A lonely life, I imagine, as that kind often is. That might be reversed, though: do loneliness and isolation instead lead to the elevation of principles and activism?
Anyway, he is more balanced that she was, at least from what I know of her, but that may be only because of the nature of his activism, which is addressed perfectly counter to hers. Fortunately, for him, he has allies who are warm and welcoming and eager to treat him gingerly, for the strength of his belief as well as (probably) for who he is.
He would never admit it, but I think that the nature of his movement has drawn him strongly in the direction that he’s gone. And I have to wonder, what kind of man is he at home?