APRIL STILL 'THE CRUELLEST MONTH'
by Allan R. Andrews
American Reporter Correspondent

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

We journalists often attribute such cruelty to April in the context of the weather or the deadline imposed by the Internal Revenue Service for the filing of income taxes.

Spring snowstorms are not uncommon in the Northern Hemisphere in April.

Of course, one can probably scour any of several almanacs and come up with a case of cruelty for any given month, but April truly seems to have delivered to us an inordinate amount of cruelty.

What is often not noted in Eliot's classic poem is that these four lines appear as the opening of a section of the poem called, "The Burial of the Dead."

April has been a month during which we often have been forced to bury our dead.

On April 18, 1945, Ernie Pyle, writer for the Scripps-Howard News considered by many to be the greatest war correspondent, was killed by a sniper on the island of Ie Shima near Okinawa, Japan.

Pyle was killed even as the nation was mourning the passing of another hero of the WW II era, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose presidency ended on April 12, 1945, when he died in Warm Springs, Ga., from a cerebral hemorrhage.

Just days before Roosevelt's death, another lesser-known hero of the WW II era was executed in a German prison camp in Flossenberg. On April 9, 1945, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a martyr after he left the safety of teaching

Just days before Roosevelt's death, another lesser-known hero of the WW II era was executed in a German prison camp in Flossenberg. On April 9, 1945, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer became a martyr after he left the safety of teaching in New York City to return to Nazi Germany and become part of a plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler.

For the record, Hitler was born on April 20, 1889, and 56 years later on April 30, 1945, he and his mistress, Eva Braun, committed suicide in a German bunker.

Just two days prior to Hitler's suicide, on April 28, 1945, Benito Mussolini, the Fascist dictator of Italy was shot and hanged.

During a previous war, on April 21, 1918, the famed German fighter pilot Manfred von Richtofen, better known as "The Red Baron," was killed.

It was an April 14 evening in 1912 when the British steamship "Titanic" hit an iceberg. More than 1500 people died when the great ship sank.

Although the exact date can never be determined, Christian tradition holds that the first Easter, the day that Jesus Christ rose from the dead after being crucified three days earlier, fell on April 23. Interestingly, the next time that Easter falls on April 23 is next year, the year 2000.

By the way, Biblical scholars generally agree that Jesus was probably crucified in April.

On April 4, 1968, the American civil rights leader, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated in Memphis, Tenn.

It was on a Good Friday, April 14, 1865, the day marking Jesus' crucifixion, that President Abraham Lincoln was killed by an assassin's bullet as he watched a play in Washington.

Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, was shot to death in Bowling Green, Va., 12 days later on April 26.

On April 26, 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in Ukraine spread radioactive fallout across Europe. An estimated 8,000 persons died as a result of the accident.

On April 20, 1999, two teen-aged gunmen entered the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, and murdered at least 13 persons before apparently killing themselves.

April, continuing in 1999, is indeed the cruellest month.

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