(Editor’s Note: The following submission by Dan Mendelson is written to Frantzer LeBlanc, whose article appeared last week on Front Row News and the IAVM newsletter.)
By Dan Mendelson
Frantzer,
Thank you for sharing your stories. They are heart wrenching. We’ve met, talked and done business together. For that I am thankful for our time together in Daytona Beach, Florida, at an IAVM event.
I live in West Bloomfield, Michigan. It’s an upper middle class neighborhood. I have African American neighbors on my street and throughout my neighborhood.
Since coronavirus came upon us I have been running outdoors. When George Floyd was murdered, I stopped in my 
tracks when I saw a young African American woman out running on the opposite of the street and said, “I am sorry for what is happening to your people.” She acknowledged it and turned to continue running. I stopped again and said, “Please tell everyone in your community that I am sorry for what is happening to you.” She smiled and turned to go. She said, “I will.” Two days later another older woman was out walking her dog. I shared my sentiments with her. She said, “All you need to do is say good morning.” I did and I will. It is where we can start.
I hope by at least acknowledging it, I can make my neighbors who don’t have the same skin color as me understand that I grieve for them when hatred is evinced in our community of America.
Frantzer, we share some common friends. I miss them dearly as I am sure you do as well.
I miss our friends John, Martin, Bobby, and Abraham who were murdered.
Last year I visited the Boston museum built in John’s memory. Here is what I learned. John was a history buff. He would have been a professor but his older brother died in WWII and he was thrust into a new role. If you ever listened to John’s speeches and press conferences you would know that he was intelligent. As our chief executive he made some mistakes. I also visited the museum in Dallas and grieved on that day when I saw how his life was taken from us. I was eight-years-old when John died. I’d been to my Cub Scout meeting that week. My sister had her bat-mitzvah that Friday evening in our synagogue. The Rabbi was quite somber. America changed then.
John Kennedy would have had a great second term and perhaps he would have exited Vietnam when he realized the error of his ways. Our loss of John changed history. That war affected us all and certainly black Americans who were one-third of the foot soldiers in Vietnam. Money spent on the war robbed us of the resources for important social programs when we needed them.
I made a pilgrimage to Martin’s home in Atlanta where he grew up, a National Historic Site. A park ranger led a tour. He talked about Martin’s short time on earth. His home was down the street from the church where his father was a pastor and where Martin learned the cadence of his profession.
Frantzer, have you been there? It is worth taking your family to see how our government has preserved that memory, his church, and created a memorial park. It is beautiful and peaceful. The museum about Martin Luther King, Jr. helped me more to understand the struggle for civil rights and what he went through by being that leader when we needed him.
About Bobby, what can we say? He was in Indianapolis campaigning for the chief executive role of our country in April 1968 when he was informed about Martin’s assassination. He stood up on the back end of a truck and spoke to his feelings. The crowd of majority blacks and whites listened. He implored them not to be bitter. It has been said that this was probably the greatest speech of Bobby’s campaign because it was delivered extemporaneously.
Here is what Bobby Kennedy said: (You can also find this speech on You Tube; it is wrenching to watch.)
“I have bad news for you, for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world, and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and killed tonight.
Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to seek justice for his fellow human beings, and he died because of that effort.
In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it is perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black–considering the evidence there evidently is that there were white people who were responsible–you can be filled with bitterness, with hatred, and a desire for revenge. We can move in that direction as a country, in great polarization–black people amongst black, white people amongst white, filled with hatred toward one another.
Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, to understand and to comprehend, and to replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand with compassion and love.
For those of you who are black and are tempted to be filled with hatred and distrust at the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I can only say that I feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man. But we have to make an effort in the United States, we have to make an effort to understand, to go beyond these rather difficult times.
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. He wrote: ‘In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.’
What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black.
So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love–a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.
We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past. We will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence. It is not the end of lawlessness. It is not the end of disorder.
But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings who abide in our land.
Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.”
In June 1968, Bobby was assassinated the week before my bar mitzva. Of course, the speech that I’d written to give at synagogue had been polished weeks before Bobby’s death. In it, I quoted the Biblical prophet Isaiah, who spoke about God with these words. “He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.”
It’s been more than 50 years since Bobby spoke about Martin and more than 50 years since Martin spoke to all of us about non-violence. Isaiah encouraged it more than 2,000 years ago and is the lesson that I learned from my teachers and carried it forward to my children. I hope it is the lesson that I think we’ve all finally learned in the death of George Floyd – that non-violence and co-existence is the new lesson for the day, the rest of our lives and for all time for everyone on this infinitesimally small blue marble situated in the vast heavens of the universe.
Frantzer, you are a role model for your family, your community, and your industry and I am thankful that our paths have crossed and look forward when in safety and in health we can see each other again and we can talk about Martin, Bobby, John, and Abraham – who started us on the process of reconciliation so long ago.
My entire life, I have been and will continue to be politically active in important social causes – now is the time for more action. I am here to join you and to fight for justice in this country. Let’s get started.
Dan Mendelson is President of Unitex Direct, Inc., based in Walled Lake, Michigan.
