Eyewitness to Churchill speech returns for dedication

Robert Hawkins, 89, a retired Jefferson City attorney, recalls attending Sir Winston Churchill’s famed “Sinews of Peace” speech in 1946. With him Friday in Fulton at the dedication of a Churchill sculpture is Edwina Sandys, Churchill’s granddaughter. Photo by Don Norfleet.

By Don Norfleet

Monday, May 16, 2011

Robert L. Hawkins Jr., a retired Jefferson City attorney, had a special reason for wanting to attend the dedication Saturday of a sculpture of Sir Winston Churchill commemorating his famed “Sinews of Peace” address at Westminster College in Fulton.

Hawkins, 89, was in the audience when Churchill intoned: “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.” It was Churchill’s historic warning of the growing communist threat posed to the West by the Soviet Union.

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