Tom Hayden S Speech After Winning California Assembly Primary, 1982

Tom Hayden’s Speech After Winning California Assembly Primary, 1982 [excerpt from Hayden’s book, Reunion: A Memoir, 1988, p. 480-481.]

“Tonight marks the passing of generations in my family. . . .My father, who lived seventy-six years, gave me a commitment to learning, a love of children, a stubborn Irish will, a sense that things usually go wrong for the honest person, and an uncanny ability to wait in patience for largemouth bass.

“I grew up in my father’s image but in a new and very different America from the thirties. Where my father dropped out of college to work, I went to a university with middle-class security and a hunger for new frontiers. Where the enemies of democracy had been Japanese militarism or German fascism, my generation saw democracy unfulfilled at home. . . .There was little authority to respect. The few who could inspire us were assassinated, and with their deaths came the death of hope itself. Millions of families were divided across a generation gap of noncommunicating—my father and I could not speak for over a decade.

“Then came a thaw in the political ice age, a democratic spring-time in America. The Vietnam War ended. Repression was turned back. Watergate dirty tricks were exposed and defeated. The rebels and radicals of the sixties were vindicated on most counts. But years of confrontation had taken a toll on us, creating negativity, burn-out, the excesses of self-destructive extremism.

“I survived. In time, I won the inner peace thqt comes from realizing that patience and commitment, love and struggle are not opposites but are the foundation of balance. I learned to be a better human being through love, marriage, fatherhood.

“But a bleeding hole remained in my life—I needed to finally end the ruptures of the sixties by restoring my relationship with my father. It was not easy, because he was even more stubborn than I am. But I am happy to say that we succeeded in becoming a loving father and son again. . . .And we extended the generational cycle into the future, as he became a proud and happy grandfather. He remained a Republican—but a Republican populist who raged against the media image of his son. He wanted me to win tonight. . . .

“So I come here tonight from my father’s funeral with a heavy heart, but a full one, with a greater sense of family responsibility than before, humbly mindful that there are more important things in life than political power, and knowing that this victory will only be meaningful if it helps improve the quality of existence of human beings as they pass through the briefness of their lives. . . .As the Bible admonishes, ‘The day of our years are threescore and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. . . .So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom [Psalm 90:10-12].’

“My father’s spirit is with me and my family here tonight. Death is the parent of birth, birth is the parent of death. My father wanted to live for this night, but he had to die a proud supporter. Dad, may you rest in peace.”