EXTRA TIME

O Captain, our Captain!

February 3, 2021 at 4:02 am Leave a comment

In the 1989 movie “The Dead Poets Society“ by Peter Weir, the poem “O Captain, my captain“ by Walt Whitman is referred to several times. The poem was written in 1865 about the death of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln. In Weir’s movie it is the respectful address of the club’s students for the popular English teacher John Keating (Robin Williams). When Keating is fired and returns to collect his belongings, the students stand on their desks and address Keating as “O Captain! My Captain!”

Now the first line of it was used by a commentator in The Telegraph by telling us about the death of 100 year old Captain Tom Moore. The WWII veteran had raised almost 40m Pounds for the NHS in spring by walking 100 laps in his garden in Bedfordshire.

Captain Sir Tom Moore rallied the nation’s morale at a low moment during the spread of coronavirus. He wasn’t a knight then, of course. “One small soul like me won’t make much difference,” he said as he set out to do 100 laps of his garden in the days before his 100th birthday. He did it, and he raised more than £32 million. It was not the money that made him lovable, but straightforward decency. This was a man who loved restoring fast motorbikes, and then did his duty as a despatch rider in Burma in the war. Duty meant risking his life. And what could have been more moving than to see the Queen knight him with her father’s sword? She knew well what duty meant. It was no irony that he succumbed to the virus against which he had found something noble to do. That is the hero’s way.

Remarkable Captain Tom was the very best of us (The Telegraph)

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