Keep Hope Alive

In July 1969, a full-page advertisement  in the Sunday  NY Times posed a request to the American public:

Hold onto this page for 1 year and hope and pray it’s ended.

The hopeful ad  appeared  one  year after the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and 6 years after the shooting  of President John Kennedy.

The copy reads:

The trouble is hoping and praying isn’t enough. Violence won’t end unless you’re willingto start the ending.

I have held onto to this yellowing page for 47 years; the hope for the end of gun violence  nearly extinguished.

In the wake of Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history,  the Senate still can’t take small steps to curb gun  violence.