By Jerry Klinger
BOYNTON BEACH, Florida — Not every project the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (JAHSP) does is successful. Normally, we have about a one-to-one ratio of program success to failure. The reasons are all over the place.
Last year, 2024, our experience was unusually bad. We had three failures to every one success. Not every project we do has an apparent Jewish connection. Sometimes, the projects and markers are focused on helping interpret American History and the American experience. Since Columbus sailed the ocean blue, Jews have been part of American history and the American experience.
At the dedication of a marker for the first permanent Jewish house of worship in Kansas, B’nai Jeshurun in Leavenworth, I addressed the assembled about the meaning of the American experience and freedom.
“Jews did not always enjoy the level of freedom, tolerance, and respect they enjoy today. (Contemporarily, some will shudder at the statement with the re-emergence of antisemitism.) Freedom is a process. It was not born whole.
Sometimes, American freedom is positive and sometimes negative. Mistakes are made. We can even go in reverse for a while. But what is unique and special about the American experience is that we have a system, a system through elections that even when we go too far off, we have a process to correct our excesses. The process is called elections.
Jews participate in all aspects of the American experience. Jews help shape the process. As long as the American people have the right to freedom of speech and assembly and to worship God as they choose, we will return to an even keel.”
July 2023, in Butler, Pennsylvania., at the Butler Farm Show political rally for candidate Donald Trump, darkness almost took over.
It’s ironic; just a few miles away from Butler, a historical marker sits in quiet memory for George Washington. It was at that location an attempt was made to kill him. It failed. Thank God.
Assassination is more than the silencing of a voice not liked. It is the assassination of the Ballot Box, the Constitutionally guaranteed, peaceful way for Americans to balance out their excesses and resolve their grievances.
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump was a historical event of major import. I approached the Connequenessing Township about placing a historical marker recognizing the terrible event. The assassination site is partially in their purview. JASHP was going to pay for it and fabricate it. The marker would be a gift to them, to be sited where they felt appropriate.
Everything was positive, then everything became negative. The stories I was told changed and then the reality… the marker project, the gift to the community and the American people by the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, was rejected.
Hunter Muro of the Butler Eagle, writing about the rejection of the marker gift to the community, reported that supervisors saw no immediate benefit to Connoquenessing Township and that they were squeamish about “highlighting that tragedy.”
I had proposed that a 200-word marker would include a memorable photo of Trump with his fist raised in the air and the option to incorporate a photo of Corey Comperatore, the Buffalo Township firefighter who was killed while protecting his family during the event.
The marker was never intended to give the people of Butler further distress. The proposed text was not controversial, simply factual. It read:
“Assassination Attempt of President Trump
Butler Farm Show Grounds
On July 13, 2024, Donald Trump, a former President of the United States and the presumptive Republican nominee in the 2024 presidential election, came to campaign in Butler County. At the Butler Farm Show Grounds, an outdoor venue about ¼ mile from this location on Evans City Road, President Trump addressed a huge crowd estimated in the tens of thousands. A few minutes into his address, President Trump, standing on the Connoquenessing Township side of the elevated stage, fortuitously turned his head to look up at a screen slightly to his rear and side to emphasize a graphical campaign message that was projected upon it. Sniper, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, having gained access to a nearby building rooftop, fired eight rounds from his AR-15 style rifle at President Trump. President Trump was struck in his upper right ear. Corey Contempore, a retired local Fire Chief sitting in the stands behind President Trump, was killed. Two other rally attendees were wounded. Within moments, the Secret Service Counter Sniper Team identified Crooks’ location and killed him. The near successful assassination attempt of President Trump revealed a massive series of security failures by the Secret Service. On October 5, 2024, President Trump courageously returned to campaign at the Butler Farm Show Grounds. Matthew Crooks’ motivation was never determined.
–Connoquenessing Township and the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation”
Perhaps the Supervisors will reconsider over time. Perhaps they won’t. Perhaps the Supervisors will consider the larger meaning of the rejection someday. The motto of The Washington Post echoes today for tomorrow, even if the marker failed for now, “Democracy Dies in the Darkness.”
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Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, www.JASHP.org