January 30, 1965: Funeral of Sir Winston Churchill
Donald R. McClarey
Cradle Catholic. Active in the pro-life movement since 1973. Father of three, one in Heaven, and happily married for 41 years. Small town lawyer and amateur historian. Former president of the board of directors of the local crisis pregnancy center for a decade.
I was only just starting elementary school, but remembered when Churchill died, largely from the National Geographic magazine our family had received on the funeral. I definitely had a sense as if historical reason itself had died. The JFK assassination had made a major impression on me (my cartoons were pre-empted, and my mother’s reaction when I told her would stay in my memory forever), but it has seemed only a blip, a downturn that would be remedied by our faithfulness to our civilization. There would be no remedy for Churchill’s death.