April

I have always loved this month.   Being a stolid northerner, I patiently put up with winter when winter sticks around too long.  April, though, helps put winter to bed.  I am also a history buff and a lot of things happened in April for some odd reason.  Perhaps it was the blood flowing again in the veins of revolutionaries and sailors or poets and dictators.  Perhaps.  More likely it was coincidence.

It is the month in which one of my favorite people - my grandmother - was born.  It is also the month in which RMS Titanic hit an iceberg and sank in the North Atlantic.   This month saw General Lee hand his sword in surrender of his army to General Grant at a tiny town in Virginia.  A few days later, the greatest American president was assassinated at Ford's Theater.  April buds were popping over North Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts when "by the rude flood" some of the first shots of the American Revolution were fired.   The first of course were fired a few hours earlier on a Common in Lexington.  The same place where a hurried rider, headed out from Charlestown on a frothing mount, had warned the countryside that the "regulars were out!"  The most murderous man in history - Adolf Hitler - was born in April and one of the most peaceful men - Dr. Martin Luther King - was assassinated.   Cherry blossoms floated down on the combatants as Federal and Confederate troops clashed near a little church called Shiloh in Tennessee. Apollo 13 blasted off and headed to the moon and infamy in April.    Thomas Jefferson's birthday is in April and the federal fort in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina called Sumter surrendered in April.   Franklin Roosevelt died in April and the Oklahoma City Federal Building was bombed this month.  Spain declared war on the United States in 1898 this month and the great St. Lawrence Seaway opened to traffic in April.

For those that enjoy learning about our past, April is a treasure.