Episcopal Press and News
Henry Kissinger Helps Establish Scholarship Fund for New York Parish
Episcopal News Service. October 31, 1990 [90286]
Margaret Larom
One would not think that an Episcopal parish dedicated to serving the homeless and hungry, and Dr. Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State under Richard Nixon, would have much in common.
Yet on Sunday night, October 21, Kissinger shared dinner and dialogue with more than 600 people who came to hear his observations on today's international issues -- and help raise money for a scholarship fund for the needy in Westchester County, New York.
The story began a year earlier, with the death of Agnes Maginnes, mother of Kissinger's wife, Nancy, and a longtime parishioner of Grace Church, White Plains, New York. Kissinger, who said the loss was "shattering" to them both, telephoned Grace Church to begin making funeral arrangements.
The rector, the Rev. Peter Larom, was tied up in a meeting and, thinking he didn't know anyone named Kissinger, told the secretary to take a message... but hastily came to the phone when she whispered, "I think it's the big H!" (Dr. Kissinger confirmed at the dinner that he had had some difficulty in getting through, and added sardonically, "It's a somewhat novel experience for me.")
During the succeeding days, Nancy Kissinger and her brother took time to see what was happening at the church where they had been confirmed and where their mother had served for so long on the altar guild. Kissinger was impressed with the outreach programs for the homeless, Hispanics, and persons with AIDS, in addition to more traditional programs focusing on day care and homebound elderly. (The parish's efforts to open a homeless shelter were featured in a television documentary called "The Common Good," part of the Vision and Values series of the National Council of Churches, aired by ABC television.)
"I wondered, what could I do," Kissinger told his audience. And he volunteered to help, by speaking without charge.
A decision was made to create a Dare to Dream Trust, that would be a scholarship fund for people of all ages who needed help in furthering their education. The idea came from a sermon delivered at the church's annual "Senior Recognition Day" in June. The preacher was the Dr. Kortright Davis, an Episcopalian teaching religion at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and author of Salvation Still A-Coming, a book on Caribbean liberation theology. He expressed surprise that a church that was doing so much in the community had no scholarship fund. Four months later, during the invocation at the Kissinger dinner, he admitted that he never thought his "casual" remarks would be taken as such a challenge -- one that raised nearly $30,000 to get the Dare to Dream Trust on its feet.
The dinner guests included representatives of county and local government, campaigning politicians, corporate executives, church people, homeless people, and students and faculty from the 11 colleges and universities in Westchester County.
The students and faculty were invited to a private reception with Kissinger and his wife before the dinner, giving them an opportunity to ask questions about world politics and events.
Kissinger treated them with respect and courtesy, responding in detail. No questions came about the Nixon years, although one student asked whether the U.S. should back Sihanouk in Cambodia and re-establish diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
Admitting he still found it almost impossible to speak with "any degree of rationality" about the subject of Vietnam and Cambodia, he dwelt at length on "the agony of those years" in which the U.S. tried to carry out a policy that was defeated from within as well as without. He said he could not forget that 3 million Cambodians were driven out of Pnom Penh by the Khmer Rouge, forced into the countryside where most of them starved. He said we had lost our chance to make a difference in Southeast Asia in 1975, and that until all our missing military personnel were accounted for, we shouldn't renew diplomatic relations with Vietnam.
The theme Kissinger was asked to address during the dinner was "Our Re-Shaping World," and he gave a wide-ranging analysis of events in Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, and the Middle East. He declared that no one, a year ago, could or would have predicted that the Berlin Wall would come down, that Germany would be unified, or that the Soviet satellite countries would struggle to be rid of Communist domination. By way of explanation, he said, "Human beings will stand oppression for just so long...," he observed.
He called Mikhail Gorbachev "a nice fellow," but expressed pessimism about his ability to stay in power much longer, because of the Soviet Union's worsening economy.
As for Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, he pointed out that Saddam Hussein is an aggressor who cannot be allowed to "face us down." Although he would not have recommended putting 200,000 American troops into Saudi Arabia so quickly, Kissinger said, now that they are there the U.S. and its allies must achieve a quick resolution to the situation -- "because the American people will not stand for another long, drawn-out war." Hussein cannot be allowed to control 60% of the world's oil and therefore most of its economy, he said. Likewise, Saudi Arabia cannot long be in a position of allowing "infidels" to guard Islam's holy sites because the Muslim world will react no matter what the political consequences.
He spoke for half an hour, his quiet, gravelly voice matched by a surprisingly deferential manner, to a rapt audience that clearly had never experienced Kissinger in his mode as teacher and foreign policy analyst.
Nor, perhaps, had they previously seen the inner man, a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, a man of integrity and faith. In his introduction, Larom tried to show, for the benefit of the gathered students, how Kissinger's college work prefigured his later work by reading from his undergraduate honors thesis at Harvard University in 1950:
"In this materialistic age, it is only when we rediscover the uniqueness and power of our human spirituality that mankind will experience a true and lasting peace."