Significant Moments: A Father's Legacy

Ludwig Geyer, the stepfather of opera composer Richard Wagner, had left his seven-year-old child a toy theater as his sole legacy.  The toy theater presaged Wagner's life's work; in adulthood Wagner had a theater built that was dedicated to the performance of his operas.

Ludwig Geyer . . .
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
. . . Father Geyer . . .
Cosima Wagner's Diaries (Thursday, December 26, 1878).
. . . had left him a toy theater for which he made himself some puppets, and at some point he started to write a play about knights of old.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
“ . . . I made a little boat out of a cigar box and rag figures, with red and white shirts . . . blue ribbons around the head, and I put them out into the sunlight . . . ”
Helen A. Cooper, Thomas Eakins The Rowing Pictures.
. . . with all the men armed and arrayed in battle formation.
Medieval Sourcebook: The Battle of Hattin 1187.
The opening scene of this gory melodrama fell into his sisters' hands, and their scornful laughter was terrible to hear.
Martin Gregor-Dellin, Richard Wagner: His Life, His Work, His Century.
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My father was not a wealthy man.  He worked as a cutter in a necktie factory.  At his death he left no valuable possessions.  Among the few items he left behind -- which comprised old letters, photographs, and a few other artifacts of purely sentimental value -- was a ticket to the Democratic National Convention held in 1936 at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.  Franklin Roosevelt was nominated for a second term at that convention.  Obviously, my father did not attend the convention, but he saved the ticket.



It was on June 27, 1936 at the Democratic National Convention that President Roosevelt delivered the famous "Rendezvous with Destiny" Speech in which he said:  "There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny."

Yes, my temporary agency could have sent me to any employer in March 1988, but it sent me to Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, whose founder, Bob Strauss, was the former Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and who was instrumental in the nomination and election of Jimmy Carter as President of the United States in 1976.  I think about that all the time.

On the issue of the 1976 Democratic National Convention:
http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2009/10/dream-of-four-miltons.html