Legacy

I do not follow college or professional sports; however, I am aware of certain coaches and players that have become icons in our world. Joe Paterno was synonymous with Penn State. To many he represented college athletics at its pinnacle. The playing of a sport is often used as a metaphor for life - its joy and its vicissitudes. Young people look up and revere their coaches. The fact that Mr. Paterno heard a report of a child being sexually molested and told this to his superiors but did not follow through is an egregious act on his part.

WASHINGTON -- Skeptics may be forgiven if they wonder about President Clinton's motives in his current tour of some of the nation's most poverty-stricken communities.If he is concerned about his legacy -- and those who know him say he is -- then it cannot hurt to be seen showing concern for the deprived in Appalachia, Watts or the Mississippi Delta.But, whatever the reason, the president is using the bully pulpit of the White House to perform a worthwhile service for Americans by calling their attention to the fact that not everyone is sharing in the extraordinary economic boom.

The guy had stringy blond hair falling below his U.S. Army cap and rotted little stumps where his teeth used to be. He said he was homeless, so naturally I thought about Parris Glendening. He said he was disabled, so naturally I thought about Kathleen Kennedy Townsend.The guy said his name was James. He was standing in the mid-day chill outside Lexington Market, asking for handouts in a voice grown raw. He took a step backward and withdrew into silence when asked for his last name and muttered something about pins in his back from an old Army accident.

HALF an inch beneath the surface of this week's triumphant rhetoric about the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court's ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education is a prevailing view that Brown has a mixed, even disappointing legacy -- that it engendered dreams of racial integration that have failed to come true.That assessment is grossly unfair.The Brown decision was meant to end legally segregated public school systems and it did so, in a way that forever changed the racial consciousness of the nation.

The debate over which American city has the greatest claim to the legacy of Edgar Allan Poe may go on forevermore. But Saturday in Richmond, Va., Poe's actual descendants - perhaps the only group whose claim to Poe's legacy is indisputable - will announce which city they side with. Surely, the great poet and author's surviving relatives should be able to decide, once and for all, whether Baltimore, Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Richmond has the greatest claim to their illustrious ancestor.

It's Iraq, stupid! Just as James Carville famously taped the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" above his desk while directing Bill Clinton's successful campaign for the presidency in 1992, so George Bush might have the Iraq version taped to the wall of the Oval Office. That was his message in last week's State of the Union address. Though foreign and domestic matters got close to equal time in the talk, it was the first half, focusing on Iraq, that got most of the rhetorical flourishes and impassioned emotion.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s 63rd birthday seems an excellent time to contemplate his legacy.One legacy -- particularly for blacks born into the post civil rights generation -- is confusion: What were we fighting for? Was the fight worth the effort? Is the battle over or does it continue? Did we win or lose?Dr. King, if he were alive today, might find these questions incomprehensible."Kids!" I can picture him exclaiming, "What's the matter with kids today?"But the issues were much clearer, say, in 1955 at the beginning of the Montgomery bus boycott.

Football is not the issue, at least not the central one.Nor is it business, politics or regionalism.The issue is legacy. The issue is how two aging warriors may one day be remembered.How else to explain the rush that millionaire Jack Kent Cooke is in to buy land around Laurel for a stadium for his team, the Washington Redskins?Or to explain William Donald Schaefer's determination to stop him?Maryland's lame-duck governor clings to the fleeting dream he may someday bring a National Football League team back to Baltimore to replace the beloved Colts.

What a swell party it would have been. Leonard Bernstein's 75th birthday, that is. There will be celebrations throughout the music world, of course, including an all-star gala at New York's Lincoln Center on the actual day, Aug. 25, but it won't be the same. Without the incomparable conductor around to share in the fun, there will be something bittersweet lingering in the air.It has been lingering since Bernstein's death in 1990. Obviously, musical life has gone on and will continue to thrive wherever culture is extant.