As you've no doubt heard, Ted Sorensen passed away over the weekend. Sorensen was, among other things, a speech writer for President Kennedy, and part of the team that negotiated an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which makes him the only person I've ever met who has actually saved the world.
In 2007, I had the good fortune to mentor three high school students as they produced a documentary portrait of Mr. Sorensen. The result was Through Words, a short film that tells Mr. Sorensen's story in his own words, gives an insider's view of one of the most terrifying periods in American history, and makes a convincing argument for the power of language in diplomacy. The film is all the more remarkable for having been produced and directed by three high school students, and I can think of no greater tribute to its subject than to include the film here.
Through Words was produced in the Unscripted program, a documentary filmmaking class at the Jacob Burns Film Center's Media Arts Lab. Thanks to filmmakers Kelly Simpson, Sam Pasternack, and Stephanie Edlund for allowing us to post the film.
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I should say why this means so much to me. I was born right in the middle-to-end of this event (Cuban Missile Crisis).
I've grown up with the idea that for some reason this soul chose to enter the Earth at the exact moment when the Doomsday Clock was at five minutes to midnight. Sometimes I joke about it, but that's just a cover, because it really just gives me pause.
I've spent my life reading about and watching documentaries on this event. More recently documents that have been declassified really have shed new light on the way the decision was made, more so even than Sorensen knew or perhaps would go into here.
It's just one of those fascinating moments in history, sort of like the obverse of the decision to drop atomic weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sort of like that freaky moment with Reagan and Gorbachev in Reykjavik, when Gorby surprises everyone and says, "Let's put everything on the table." And Reagan thought he was joking and laughed it off.
Science fiction writers use these moments to imagine parallel universes, points in time where a single moment changes fate, insofar as there is fate, pretending that one world goes forward on one path, and another world is spawned also in the path not taken.
Like I said, it gives me pause.