by Alex Brooks
Fifty years ago last week, Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his historic “I Have a Dream” speech to 250,000 citizens crowding the Lincoln Memorial and all adjacent parts of the National Mall. On the stage with him were such renowned civil rights leaders as Bayard Rustin, Julian Bond, Andrew Young, Dr. Ralph Abernathy and John Lewis, age 23 at the time, who also spoke. [private]There were also plenty of celebrities on the stage including Marlon Brando, Burt Lancaster, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte, Senator Hubert Humphrey, Paul Newman, Bob Dylan, Dick Gregory, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr. and others. But right next to Doctor
King during the speech, and clearly visible in pictures and video of the speech, was Gordon “Gunny” Gundrum of Grafton.
Gundrum was 25 then and had been working as a Park Ranger in Washington, D.C., for four years by that time. He normally worked at the Arlington Cemetery but had been called to the Mall to help keep order during the demonstration and was assigned to the Lincoln Memorial. The Washington D.C. police were bringing in reserve officers and deputized firefighters as well so that a total of 5,900 police officers were on duty in the immediate area. Several thousand soldiers and National Guardsmen stood ready nearby in case there was trouble.
Authorities were expecting perhaps 20,000, 30,000 or even 40,000 people to show up, said Gundrum. In fact, an estimated 250,000 people showed up. Gundrum had already had some experience with scary crowds. While he was in the Marines stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow five years earlier, President Eisenhower had sent U.S. armed forces into Lebanon, and, in response, a demonstration was organized outside the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and 100,000 people showed up with their pockets full of rocks. Gundrum was one of only ten Marines trying to protect the embassy, and every window in the embassy building was broken.
But the crowd in Washington was benign. Gundrum recalled at one point that something that was happening on the Mall came to an end, and he could see those people making their way toward the Lincoln Memorial to hear the speeches there. He said the people moving toward him looked like a “flowing river,” and it was a bit scary. But the large crowd was “very well-behaved,” and there were no major crowd control problems.
There were a number of singers who performed at the podium where Gundrum was stationed prior to King’s speech. Joan Baez sang “We Shall Overcome.” Bob Dylan sang “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” about the murder of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers. Peter, Paul, and Mary sang “Blowing in the Wind” and “If I Had a Hammer.” Mahalia Jackson sang “How I Got Over.”
During Dr. King’s speech, Gundrum stepped up early in the speech to adjust the microphones because King was speaking very softly and Gundrum was concerned that he could not be heard. This was probably an orator’s technique of talking softly early in the speech so that the audience would strain to listen so that he can hit them with the full force of his message later in the speech.
Gundrum recalls Mahalia Jackson, standing just behind him, “hollering in my ear.” She was saying, “Tell’em about the dream, Martin!” Jackson had heard King speak several times before and had heard some earlier version of his “I Have a Dream” theme. During the first half of the speech he looked down frequently and was reading his prepared text, but, somewhere in the middle, responding to Jackson’s urging, he abandoned the prepared text and launched into the section about his dream extemporaneously.
Gundrum said that with all the things on his mind during the speech he was not able to listen too carefully to the speech itself, but he recalls being tremendously impressed with King’s delivery. “He had a way of singing it out – his cadence and speech grew more exciting as he went on.” Gundrum remarks on the rhythm and musicality of the speech, likening it to Ravel’s “Bolero.” But thinking it over afterward, Gundrum said he was inspired by the content of the speech also. “I took away from that day and that speech some idea of what the world should be and what we should all strive for.”
Media Star
Gundrum has been quite a bit in the media spotlight in the last few weeks. It all started about a month ago when the AARP magazine was doing a piece about the 50th anniversary of the speech, and they somehow figured out who the Park Ranger in the pictures was and found him here in Grafton. After that article came out, many other media outlets picked it up, and Gundrum started getting a lot of phone calls about it. He was on TV on the local Albany station, but he was also on the Today Show on the morning of the 50 year anniversary of the speech (August 28) and on the ABC evening news that day also. John Gray devoted his Troy Record column to Gundrum, calling him the most interesting man in Rensselaer County.
While in New York City to do the Today Show, Gundrum spoke with Rosemary McGill who was one of his fellow guests on the segment about Dr. King’s speech. She was a civil rights activist who came up from Florida for the March on Washington. She said that while growing up in the south at that time she thought of white policemen as vicious and hateful people because they were so often beating or terrorizing her or her friends. She said seeing Gundrum in uniform, protecting Dr. King, gave her a new idea about the authorities in this country, and she guessed that he had that affect on many observers at the time. Gundrum said their meeting was a touching encounter for both of them.
Other Stories
Gundrum is a wonderful raconteur, and his ability to tell a story probably put him more in demand as a TV guest this past week. He likes to tell stories about his time as a Marine, guarding the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Apparently a lot of politicians and celebrities came to our embassy in Moscow, and he met them all. The Marines on duty were the first to greet visitors and sat with them while they waited for the Ambassador to come down to greet them. While waiting, Elizabeth Taylor asked where the men go at night for fun. Gundrum told her they go to a night club at the American House, and she said she might go. She did go that evening, and Gundrum asked her to dance, and she danced with him. He has a number of stories like this, of encounters with Adlai Stevenson and Nikita Krushchev, playing cards with Jack Palance at the embassy and standing guard all night at the door of President Eisenhower’s hotel room in Paris until, at the end of their shift, Eisenhower himself came out and gave them some breakfast.
One of the best stories took place a few months after Dr. King’s speech, soon after President Kennedy was shot. A limousine showed up at the gate of Arlington Cemetery after hours, and Gundrum was asked to go open the gate. In the limousine were Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and a whole bunch of members of the Kennedy family. They asked Gundrum about a remark President Kennedy had made a year earlier when he came to Arlington Cemetery on Veterans Day to lay a wreath on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Kennedy had greatly admired the view from a particular spot. Gundrum said he had heard the President remark on what a beautiful view it was, and he could take them to the spot where he said it. He did that, and they then walked around the area below that spot and chose a place for the President to be buried.[/private]