A Person’s A Person
Stories
Contents
“A Person’s A Person” by Frank Ramirez
“Aaron Was A Great Baseball Player Too” by John Sumwalt
A Person’s A Person
by Frank Ramirez
Mark 4:26-34
He did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. (Mark 4:34)
By 1940 Theodor Geisel, more popularly known as Dr. Seuss, had made a name for himself, in advertising, political cartoons, and children’s books. That was also year he published one of his most famous works, Horton Hatches the Egg, a story about an elephant who was asked by a bird to sit on an egg in a nest. The bird leaves him there, and despite his extraordinary discomfort up in the tree, and in all kinds of weather, and despite the ridicule that other animals heap on him, he keeps his word and sits on that egg until it hatches.
I meant what I said,
And I said what I meant….
An elephant’s faithful
One-hundred percent.
When the egg finally hatches, Horton is rewarded with the outcome – an elephant bird, complete with wings!
By that time, however, Geisel was cutting ties with the newspaper chain that featured his political cartoons because they kept changing his warnings against Hitler’s Germany and the Empire of Japan for a more isolationist stance. As part of his response, as war approached and throughout the Second World War, Geisel turned his artistic talents to the war effort.
There’s no denying his cartoons depicted German and Japanese leaders in the worst possible light. Nowadays we would consider his illustrations as racist, especially in their depiction of the Japanese, who he pictured as bloodthirsty sub-humans. Whether or not it helps to say the other side depicted Americans in similar fashion is beside the point.
Once the war was over aid from the United States poured into Japan, the former enemy, to rebuild and rehabilitate the country as part of the Marshall Plan. Geisel returned to producing his popular children’s books. In addition, his attitude towards the Japanese underwent a transformation. As Japan recovered from the war’s devastation, including the destructive results of two atomic bombs, its children discovered the joy of Dr. Seuss. Over time Geisel earned substantial royalties in that country. After his involvement with a film led to one of the most spectacular failures of his career, he and his wife Helen decided to travel to Japan and spent some of those royalties in a tour arranged by his publishers.
Geisel was profoundly moved by that visit. While some criticized the amount of money poured by the victorious Allies into that nation, Geisel saw that it had made a wonderful difference in ordinary lives. The Geisel’s visited schools and met the children, who drew pictures for him of what they wanted to be when they grew up – solving world hunger, exploring space, working against war. As he wrote later, “Most had visions of themselves working for a better world.”
He was especially impressed by the artwork of little girls who prior to the war had few opportunities open to them. These young children deserved to be heard, he realized, even though others in his world may not see them.
Within a year he’d written another children’s book – Horton Hears a Who, in part inspired by his visit to Japan. In this story Horton the elephant heard a tiny voice calling for help, coming from a passing mote of dust. Horton secures the mote onto a thistle for its protection. The creatures on this invisible world, called Who’s who live in Whoville, are in danger of destruction and Horton resolves to protect them.
Unfortunately, the other animals, who lack his giant ears and are unable to hear the Who’s, ridicule him and attempt to destroy the thistle. At one point the thistle is stolen by a bird and dropped in a field full of thistles. The city of Whoville undergoes massive destruction, not unlike the descriptions of what had occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In despair, but refusing to give up, Horton listens to every single thistle until he locates the Who’s at last.
In the end, Horton and the Who’s work together to create a sound loud enough for the other animals to hear. One last Who, smaller than everyone else, is discovered to have been sitting silent while everyone else shouts and hollers “We are here!” he is convinced to join the others. He makes a little sound, “Yopp!”, and that pushes the noise level just over the edge, so that all the animals can hear the Who’s. Once convinced that the Who’s are real, all the animals work together to secure the safety of Whoville.
In this book Horton the Elephant insists “A person’s a person no matter how small.” In a time when mainstream America was suspicious of people when from other countries, and when many people in America were forbidden from voting or taking part in society, whose voices weren’t heard, “When the little (Who) boy stands up and yells ‘Yopp!’ and saves the whole place, that’s my statement about voting. Everyone counts.”
Geisel was insisting that everyone matters, including those Japanese who the Allies had helped rebuild their country. In his way he was showing that the enemy can be transformed into friends. But rather than talk about the politics of his books overtly, he preferred to let the story speak for him, and especially speak to the children, who he considered the hope of humanity. He admitted that the stories were propaganda, but they were intended to improve the world, not tell lies about it.
The ministry of Jesus was often best expressed in stories that we call parables, in part because some people may have closed their ears to truths they don’t like but are open to stories that introduce them to truth.
(Want to know more? See “Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination” by Brian Jay Jones, Dutton, 2019.)
* * *
Aaron Was A Great Baseball Player Too
by John Sumwalt
1 Samuel 15:34--16:13
…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. (v. 16:7b)
When you enter the front gates of American Family Field in Milwaukee, home of the National League Milwaukee Brewers, you walk by the statue of Henry Aaron. "Hammerin' Hank" was one of my childhood baseball heroes and is now in my pantheon of spiritual heroes. Henry Aaron was a great human being and a great baseball player too.
I never saw Hank play in person. I heard him play on the radio while we were milking cows. There was never time or money enough for a trip to the stadium 150 miles and a world away from the haymows and cornfields of our little farm in Richland County, Wisconsin. Earl Gillespie's play by play was almost as good as being there, especially the night Hank hit the pennant winning homerun in 1957; his greatest moment in baseball, he later said, more important to him than breaking Babe Ruth's homerun record. The Braves were tied with the St. Louis Cardinals two to two in the eleventh inning. The winner of the game would go on to the World Series against the New York Yankees.
Hank hit that walk off homerun on the same day that race riots broke out in Little Rock, Arkansas, over the integration of the public schools. Had they been playing in St Louis instead of Milwaukee, Aaron would not have been allowed to stay in the same hotel as his white teammates who carried him off the field. It was a different world in 1957. A black baseball player was the toast of the town in Milwaukee. President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock to escort nine brave black children to what, until that day, had been an all-white high school. They were jeered and spat upon as they made their way through the angry crowd up the steps of the school building.
Over the next two weeks, as the troops kept the peace in Arkansas, Henry Aaron hit three homeruns and a triple for a total of seven runs to lead the Milwaukee Braves in beating the Yankees in a hard fought seven game series. The cows got less attention than the radio during those tense days.
Not a lot had changed in America seventeen years later as Hank came closer and closer to hitting that 715th homerun as a member of the now Atlanta Braves. Hate mail, some with death threats, started pouring into Atlanta because a black man was about to break Babe Ruth's record. Aaron was jeered and spat upon in some stadiums. One reporter asked him how he could remain so calm in the midst of these threats on his life. Hank said, "When I was in the ballpark, I felt there was nothing that could bother me. I felt safe. I felt like I was surrounded by angels, and I had God's hand on my shoulder. I didn't feel like anything could bother me.
After breaking the record on April 8, 1974, Hank and his wife, Billye, had a little party for a small group of family and friends. In his 1991 autobiography, “I Had A Hammer,” he described his feelings of deep thankfulness and an encounter with the holy:
"Billye and I were alone for a little while before everybody arrived, and while she was in the bedroom getting ready, I went off downstairs to be by myself for a few minutes. When I was alone and the door was shut, I got down on my knees and closed my eyes and thanked God for pulling me through. At that moment, I knew what the past twenty-five years of my life had been all about. I had done something that nobody else in the world had ever done, and with it came feelings that nobody else has ever had --- not exactly anyway. I didn't feel a wild sense of joy. I didn't feel like celebrating. But I probably felt closer to God at that moment than at any other in my life. I felt a deep sense of gratitude and a wonderful surge of liberation all at the same time. I also felt a stream of tears running down my face."
Though I never saw Hank Aaron play I did see him in person once, across several rows of seats at the old County Stadium on April 6, 1999. He was in town to throw out the first pitch the next day as the Milwaukee Brewers played their first home game in the National League. There was no way to get closer and I didn't think to wave. I just stood and stared, awestruck to be so close to a baseball legend and so thankful for the life of this great man.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 13, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“A Person’s A Person” by Frank Ramirez
“Aaron Was A Great Baseball Player Too” by John Sumwalt
A Person’s A Person
by Frank Ramirez
Mark 4:26-34
He did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples. (Mark 4:34)
By 1940 Theodor Geisel, more popularly known as Dr. Seuss, had made a name for himself, in advertising, political cartoons, and children’s books. That was also year he published one of his most famous works, Horton Hatches the Egg, a story about an elephant who was asked by a bird to sit on an egg in a nest. The bird leaves him there, and despite his extraordinary discomfort up in the tree, and in all kinds of weather, and despite the ridicule that other animals heap on him, he keeps his word and sits on that egg until it hatches.
I meant what I said,
And I said what I meant….
An elephant’s faithful
One-hundred percent.
When the egg finally hatches, Horton is rewarded with the outcome – an elephant bird, complete with wings!
By that time, however, Geisel was cutting ties with the newspaper chain that featured his political cartoons because they kept changing his warnings against Hitler’s Germany and the Empire of Japan for a more isolationist stance. As part of his response, as war approached and throughout the Second World War, Geisel turned his artistic talents to the war effort.
There’s no denying his cartoons depicted German and Japanese leaders in the worst possible light. Nowadays we would consider his illustrations as racist, especially in their depiction of the Japanese, who he pictured as bloodthirsty sub-humans. Whether or not it helps to say the other side depicted Americans in similar fashion is beside the point.
Once the war was over aid from the United States poured into Japan, the former enemy, to rebuild and rehabilitate the country as part of the Marshall Plan. Geisel returned to producing his popular children’s books. In addition, his attitude towards the Japanese underwent a transformation. As Japan recovered from the war’s devastation, including the destructive results of two atomic bombs, its children discovered the joy of Dr. Seuss. Over time Geisel earned substantial royalties in that country. After his involvement with a film led to one of the most spectacular failures of his career, he and his wife Helen decided to travel to Japan and spent some of those royalties in a tour arranged by his publishers.
Geisel was profoundly moved by that visit. While some criticized the amount of money poured by the victorious Allies into that nation, Geisel saw that it had made a wonderful difference in ordinary lives. The Geisel’s visited schools and met the children, who drew pictures for him of what they wanted to be when they grew up – solving world hunger, exploring space, working against war. As he wrote later, “Most had visions of themselves working for a better world.”
He was especially impressed by the artwork of little girls who prior to the war had few opportunities open to them. These young children deserved to be heard, he realized, even though others in his world may not see them.
Within a year he’d written another children’s book – Horton Hears a Who, in part inspired by his visit to Japan. In this story Horton the elephant heard a tiny voice calling for help, coming from a passing mote of dust. Horton secures the mote onto a thistle for its protection. The creatures on this invisible world, called Who’s who live in Whoville, are in danger of destruction and Horton resolves to protect them.
Unfortunately, the other animals, who lack his giant ears and are unable to hear the Who’s, ridicule him and attempt to destroy the thistle. At one point the thistle is stolen by a bird and dropped in a field full of thistles. The city of Whoville undergoes massive destruction, not unlike the descriptions of what had occurred in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In despair, but refusing to give up, Horton listens to every single thistle until he locates the Who’s at last.
In the end, Horton and the Who’s work together to create a sound loud enough for the other animals to hear. One last Who, smaller than everyone else, is discovered to have been sitting silent while everyone else shouts and hollers “We are here!” he is convinced to join the others. He makes a little sound, “Yopp!”, and that pushes the noise level just over the edge, so that all the animals can hear the Who’s. Once convinced that the Who’s are real, all the animals work together to secure the safety of Whoville.
In this book Horton the Elephant insists “A person’s a person no matter how small.” In a time when mainstream America was suspicious of people when from other countries, and when many people in America were forbidden from voting or taking part in society, whose voices weren’t heard, “When the little (Who) boy stands up and yells ‘Yopp!’ and saves the whole place, that’s my statement about voting. Everyone counts.”
Geisel was insisting that everyone matters, including those Japanese who the Allies had helped rebuild their country. In his way he was showing that the enemy can be transformed into friends. But rather than talk about the politics of his books overtly, he preferred to let the story speak for him, and especially speak to the children, who he considered the hope of humanity. He admitted that the stories were propaganda, but they were intended to improve the world, not tell lies about it.
The ministry of Jesus was often best expressed in stories that we call parables, in part because some people may have closed their ears to truths they don’t like but are open to stories that introduce them to truth.
(Want to know more? See “Becoming Dr. Seuss: Theodor Geisel and the Making of an American Imagination” by Brian Jay Jones, Dutton, 2019.)
* * *
Aaron Was A Great Baseball Player Too
by John Sumwalt
1 Samuel 15:34--16:13
…for the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart. (v. 16:7b)
When you enter the front gates of American Family Field in Milwaukee, home of the National League Milwaukee Brewers, you walk by the statue of Henry Aaron. "Hammerin' Hank" was one of my childhood baseball heroes and is now in my pantheon of spiritual heroes. Henry Aaron was a great human being and a great baseball player too.
I never saw Hank play in person. I heard him play on the radio while we were milking cows. There was never time or money enough for a trip to the stadium 150 miles and a world away from the haymows and cornfields of our little farm in Richland County, Wisconsin. Earl Gillespie's play by play was almost as good as being there, especially the night Hank hit the pennant winning homerun in 1957; his greatest moment in baseball, he later said, more important to him than breaking Babe Ruth's homerun record. The Braves were tied with the St. Louis Cardinals two to two in the eleventh inning. The winner of the game would go on to the World Series against the New York Yankees.
Hank hit that walk off homerun on the same day that race riots broke out in Little Rock, Arkansas, over the integration of the public schools. Had they been playing in St Louis instead of Milwaukee, Aaron would not have been allowed to stay in the same hotel as his white teammates who carried him off the field. It was a different world in 1957. A black baseball player was the toast of the town in Milwaukee. President Eisenhower sent federal troops to Little Rock to escort nine brave black children to what, until that day, had been an all-white high school. They were jeered and spat upon as they made their way through the angry crowd up the steps of the school building.
Over the next two weeks, as the troops kept the peace in Arkansas, Henry Aaron hit three homeruns and a triple for a total of seven runs to lead the Milwaukee Braves in beating the Yankees in a hard fought seven game series. The cows got less attention than the radio during those tense days.
Not a lot had changed in America seventeen years later as Hank came closer and closer to hitting that 715th homerun as a member of the now Atlanta Braves. Hate mail, some with death threats, started pouring into Atlanta because a black man was about to break Babe Ruth's record. Aaron was jeered and spat upon in some stadiums. One reporter asked him how he could remain so calm in the midst of these threats on his life. Hank said, "When I was in the ballpark, I felt there was nothing that could bother me. I felt safe. I felt like I was surrounded by angels, and I had God's hand on my shoulder. I didn't feel like anything could bother me.
After breaking the record on April 8, 1974, Hank and his wife, Billye, had a little party for a small group of family and friends. In his 1991 autobiography, “I Had A Hammer,” he described his feelings of deep thankfulness and an encounter with the holy:
"Billye and I were alone for a little while before everybody arrived, and while she was in the bedroom getting ready, I went off downstairs to be by myself for a few minutes. When I was alone and the door was shut, I got down on my knees and closed my eyes and thanked God for pulling me through. At that moment, I knew what the past twenty-five years of my life had been all about. I had done something that nobody else in the world had ever done, and with it came feelings that nobody else has ever had --- not exactly anyway. I didn't feel a wild sense of joy. I didn't feel like celebrating. But I probably felt closer to God at that moment than at any other in my life. I felt a deep sense of gratitude and a wonderful surge of liberation all at the same time. I also felt a stream of tears running down my face."
Though I never saw Hank Aaron play I did see him in person once, across several rows of seats at the old County Stadium on April 6, 1999. He was in town to throw out the first pitch the next day as the Milwaukee Brewers played their first home game in the National League. There was no way to get closer and I didn't think to wave. I just stood and stared, awestruck to be so close to a baseball legend and so thankful for the life of this great man.
*****************************************
StoryShare, June 13, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
