Nelson Mandela
Dec 6, 2013, 3:14 AM | Updated: 9:33 pm
I’m sorry I have to be the one to report this to you, but Mt. Everest just fell down.
And I’m afraid that trip to Egypt you had planned isn’t going to be as memorable because, you see, the great pyramid has crumbled into dust.
That’s what much of the world feels since yesterday when we all first heard about the death of Nelson Mandela.
How could there be such shock associated with the death of a 95-year-old man who had been ill for so long? I feel stunned.
I’ve never been in a world without Nelson Mandela. Of course, in the 60s, I only knew him as a lone, loud voice speaking to all who would listen about the sacrilege of apartheid. And then, he and that voice were imprisoned for 27 years. But, in contrast to that eternity, suddenly he was the president of South Africa… the leader of both black and white South Africans.
I think of Nelson Mandela as the Martin Luther King Jr. of the whole planet.
But for today, I seem to be missing Everest.
I’m Pat McMahon.
