Whenever Mark Shields would ask Judy Woodruff during his Friday evening discussions with David Brooks if he could say just one thing, Mary and I would come to the edge of our seats, she on the small couch, I on the recliner, knowing he was about to speak from the heart to our better angels.
We were, as undoubtedly was the case with many, many others, his Amen corner, affirming with “yesses!” and “here, heres!” his invocations of fair play — a spirit every bit as native to this country as is individualism. They are the counterbalancing, and still-standing twin towers of our civic life — one for all, and all for one. In according due weight to each, though with fairness being more compelling in the end, I would say he was quintessentially American.
That Mark Shields was described by his colleagues as “unpretentious” rang true, as did his belief that Robert Kennedy, whose presidential campaign he ran, would have been this country’s best president. Kennedy, tough yet fair-minded, a rugged individualist who came to be everyone’s champion, who wanted to lift everyone up. One can become sad, as apparently Mark Shields often did, in thinking about what might have been had Robert Kennedy lived.
Being unpretentious, I wonder if he ever came to come out here, pretension ranking rather high on what used to be known simply as the East End or the South Fork rather than the fabled “Hamptons.”
Why do people build such Xanadus, I often wonder, boxing nature in with hedges, stockade fences, and security cameras? I used to say that it was not puzzling that those here who were truly wealthy, the fishermen — truly wealthy when it came to the things of the spirit — lived in tiny houses, the creeks, the harbors, the bays, and the ocean being their home.
So, to Mark, who always hit the mark, farewell.