Although this is not OC specific, the passing of Rosa Parks is worthy of mention.

Today’s Orange County Register has a photo of Ms. Parks taken in Yorba Linda.

Although I never met Ms. Parks, I did grow up in Alabama and I posted this story on my personal blog this morning:

One Sunday when I was growing up in Mobile, Alabama, my aunt was visiting from Los Angeles. As a treat, she gave my twin brother and me money to take the bus to go downtown to see a movie. And we got to go by ourselves.

When we got to the bus stop, we met two white boys who were also our age and twins as well. The four of us talked and got on the bus together and were enjoying each other as young boys will do. And we thought it was neat that we were two sets of twins who happened to meet each other at the bus stop.

My parents hadn’t taught my brother and me the “rules” of segregation, even though they weren’t legal rules of the day, but still so in some people’s memory. Clearly, the two other boys hadn’t been taught those rules either. However, an old man on the bus was upset that the four of us boys were sitting together and he had the driver stop the bus to ask my brother and me to move to the back of the bus.