The Los Angeles summer of 1965 produced the frustration-generated Watts riots - or Watts "revolt" as I was taught to call those days. That was the year our family went to England for a pulpit exchange. We were in London the day after Adlai Stevenson dropped dead on Oxford Street, the victim of a heart attack. Mr. Stevenson never became president, but he won a special place in the hearts of the American people. Those of us old enough to remember his campaigns will never forget him - especially the night he lost to Dwight Eisenhower and went on television with his concession statement, quoting from President Lincoln's story about the boy who stubbed his toe and said that he was too big to cry, and far too badly hurt to laugh.

That day is an easy one for me to remember because of the way the…