What's in a tribute?

For the denizens of Ernie Pyle Hall, last week marked the anniversary of two people’s deaths, two people whose sense of humanity and range of accomplishment transcended the reaches of IU and the country.\nOne was former Director of Student Media Dave Adams. The other was former Attorney General and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy.\nBut last week was last week. I should shift my focus to the here-and-now, allowing all that sad stuff to slide back into the past, where it belongs. So why do I feel it necessary to take another look back?\nMoreover, how can the tribute we end up giving them do justice to the good they have done, and continue to do, for us? \nI don’t mean to cast a pall over any of the memories or experiences one may have with these two celebrated lives. In fact, I embrace the argument that the intimate and influential stamp they’ve left on each and every person should never be forgotten.\nBut not a few people would make that same argument on behalf of former president Ronald Reagan, who passed away four years ago last Thursday, or the countless men who died preserving our freedoms as Americans on D-Day, 64 years ago last Friday. \nHow, then, should we go about justifying and legitimizing the tributes we’ve already given? How can we bring ourselves to label one person’s life “important,” and the other “unimportant”? Well, that’s a complicated question. \nA tribute should not only celebrate the person and their emotional impact on individual lives. It should also draw attention to the social forces and attitudes they fought, and the ideals and ideas we can learn from them. In this way we can do what they would’ve asked of us, at the bare minimum: to understand, create and take charge of our own destinies. \nIn turn, once we’ve passed on, each of us will deserve a tribute in our own right, having left the world in better shape than when we first came into it. \nWe shouldn’t settle for sentimental reminiscences; we should admire and further the legendary work begun by the people who are now sealed away in the past. To fall short of doing so would make their accomplishments, if not their visions and dreams, seem simplistic and inconsequential – confined to the dry, lifeless pages of history. \nWe would see their names in some newspaper blurb and perhaps feel a pinch of familiarity or fondness. But we wouldn’t come close to realizing what they did for us, what they left behind to render our lives easier, happier and less difficult than their own.\nNeedless to say, settling for fond memories is the exact opposite of what a tribute should do. Our generation continues to be charged with an ignorance of history, but we have unprecedented opportunities to shape the history started by the people we’ve loved and lost. \nRemembering them is just the beginning. And if you ask me, that’s a pretty fortunate way to start.