One of Our Cradles: St. Luke's Hospital, Kansas City, Mo.

The picture is tiny but of great value to us. St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo, has been transformed, since this photograph was taken, into a gigantic and awe-inspiring structure, but forty-six years ago this day, on the morning of Lee Harvey Oswald’s assassination, long before the sun rose, driving our little grey VW bug, I was headed to this building with Brigitte and, many hours later, our youngest child, Michelle, was born in this much humbler structure to her exhausted mother. Happy birthday, dear daughter. It is a joy to have you here with us today—and strange indeed to think that you are here vacationing briefly from your labors at Les Bluets, that most famous of all maternity hospitals of the great city of Paris—where the facilitation of such events, always absolutely unique although they are, is your calling and your daily work...

The second picture shows Les Bluets. It is a very modern facility but, be assured, has its own honored and ancient history by now. Les Bluets was founded in 1901. Yes. Thinking of that time and this one, and contemplating our present rough history, on its still lurching slouch toward Bethlehem, it strikes me that there are, thanks to the convergence of many tiny lights of human spirit, many things for which we may be grateful in this season of thanksgiving.