This world is brimming with people. Certainly, we can only know a tiny portion of the 8 billion on this big ball, spinning in space. Sometimes, even with those people we think we know, there is so much we do not.
Today is May 13, 2021. Bunches of somebodies have been born on this date, historically. Here are three extremely different examples of things we may not have known before.
In 1756, Wojciech Żywny was born in Mseno, Bohemia. In today’s terms, it is the Czech Republic. He was probably much like any other boy in that region growing up. The one thing that set him out apart from the others was his talent for music. Little Wojciech Żywny became quite a pianist and would grow up to be a composer as well.
In his adult life, he tutored others in music, including the children of Princess Sapieha. He later moved to Warsaw, and, beginning in 1816, when Żywny was 60 years old, he began teaching a young boy named Frederic Chopin. Yes, Chopin.
He taught little boy Chopin from 1816 and 1821. Żywny instilled in him a lasting love of Bach and Mozart. But not so much with Beethoven. Chopin’s piano skills soon passed right by his respected teacher. In 1821, eleven-year-old Chopin dedicated a Polonaise in A-flat major to Żywny as a gift.
On this date, in 1922, Bea Arthur was born. We all know her as an American comedian, singer, and actress — probably most famous for Maude in The Golden Girls.
Her real name was Bernice Frankel. She was born to Rebecca (née Pressner) and Philip Frankel in New York City in Brooklyn. Her mother was born in Austria, and her father was born in Poland. She was raised in a Jewish home with an older sister named Gertrude and a younger sister, Marian.
I had heard she was in the military. It just so happened that during World War II, Bernice enlisted as one of the first members of the United States Marine Corps Women’s Reserve in 1943. From basic training, she went right to Washington, D.C., and served as a typist at Marine headquarters. She must not have liked typing, for in June 1943, she put in a transfer request to the Motor Transport School at Camp Lejeune. Bea then worked as a truck driver and dispatcher in Cherry Point, North Carolina, between 1944 and 1945. After the war, Bernice Frankel was honorably discharged at the rank of staff sergeant.
After the Marines, she studied in Philadelphia, where she became a licensed medical technician. Bernice interned at a local hospital for the summer and must not have been too keen on that either. She left for NYC to enroll in the School of Drama at The New School. That same year, she married fellow Marine Robert Alan Aurthur. They were divorced within three years, but she kept his name, changing the spelling to “Arthur.” Of course, that whole acting gig turned out okay for her.
Finally, on this date in 1931, Jim Jones was born. It is my opinion that he was a wretched human to the core. He became the leader of the Peoples Temple cult (Jonestown Massacre). What I didn’t know is that he was born in Randolph County, Indiana.
His parents were poor. They were mostly of Irish descent, and Jones also claimed partial Cherokee ancestry through his mother. By 1934, the throws of the Great Depression forced the family to move to Lynn, Indiana, where Jones grew up in a shack without plumbing.
Growing up, Jones was a voracious reader who studied Joseph Stalin, Karl Marx, Mao Zedong, and Adolf Hitler. He also developed an intense interest in religion. He didn’t have many childhood friends. Reports say he killed small animals and stabbed a cat to death.
His father was associated with the Ku Klux Klan, and young Jim Jones was seen giving the Nazi salute and saying “Heil Hitler.” Later, Jones’s parents separated, and Jones relocated with his mother to Richmond, Indiana. In December 1948, he graduated from Richmond High School early with honors.
Then, we know that on November 18, 1978, 909 inhabitants of Jonestown, 304 of them children, died of cyanide poisoning on his command. This resulted in the greatest single loss of American civilian life (murder and suicide) in a deliberate act until September 11, 2001.
Three examples of people on this earth, affecting other people. And all the details, we know, or may not know, about them. Some good. Some bad.
It is a big world out there. Everything we do impacts the rest of the world.
How will we do today?
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“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
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“We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.”
― William James
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“Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.”
― Albert Schweitzer
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What a difference a day makes. Same day, though.
