Category: Life

Becoming Profiles In Courage

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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To the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate of the United States of  America:

Dear Sir or Madame:

I recently penned a letter to President Trump offering some unsolicited advice regarding  the kind of behavior that we need from our nation’s chief executive during this unprecedented time of pandemic, social unrest and economic difficulty. It has occurred to me since I offered my views to him that in reality his duty as the president is to be an administrator, not someone enacting rules and laws. Sadly during the tenure of the last several presidents there have been far too many executive actions taken in the absence of actual lawmaking from your chambers. As a result it all too often feels as though we have one person deciding how to approach the nation’s many problems much like a monarch might do while all of you act more like presidential lackeys or critics than actual lawmakers. The phrase “do nothing Congress” seems quite apt in describing the nature of the standoff between republicans and democrats in the legislative branch of government. The result is that most of the country’s pressing problems are being mostly ignored by the men and women elected to represent us. Instead for years now we have endured a patchwork of temporary directives announced by our presidents to repair the damage done by the inactivity on your part.

It has been far too long since I have observed any efforts in Congress to work together for the good of the nation. A while back you attempted to pass a law to reform immigration and you even came close to a compromise that would have created a pathway to citizenship for immigrants and the dreamers but in the end you froze under pressure from your more vocal so called bases and ended up doing nothing. Somehow it seemed better to you to just let the problem fester and grow while President Obama decided to protect the dreamers by executive action and President Trump used his power to divert taxpayer money to building a wall. Years after the moment when a bipartisan immigration bill was on the brink of passing, we still await a permanent solution and waste precious time and money on stop gap measures.

We have watched time after time as you have battled with one another over the budget with ridiculous scenes of a Senator reading from a children’s book to filibuster rather than to work out a deal good for the people. You have special investigative panels seeking information over and over again but in the final analysis they seemingly accomplish nothing. Even in the midst of a pandemic you only seem capable of sending out one time checks to some of the citizens without regard as to who might actually need the assistance at the moment.

You have witnessed the social unrest that has bubbled over in cities and towns and the best you seem to be able to do is sponsor bills declaring Junteenth to be a national holiday. Rival legislation offered in the democrat controlled House and the republican controlled Senate is not even allowed to see the light of day. Efforts to actually do something are ignored without so much as an open discussion that might demonstrate a real intent to create meaningful and systematic change. Instead you appear to compete with one another for the most righteous indignation and pontification. None among you seem to have the courage to actually cross the aisle to insist that everyone work together to legislate the badly needed changes. As usual you talk and talk and talk but get nothing of substance done. Then you complain and worry about presidential overreach depending on which party holds the executive reins at the time. With your abdication of the responsibilities of legislation you have turned the role of the president into a monarchy.

I know that there are fringe groups that exert great control over each of you with the threat of taking away your office if you do not follow their dictates. I would like to suggest, however, that your duty is not to be herded like lambs to the slaughter but to have enough courage and character to do what is necessary for the American people. You should be less beholden to the current thinking of a party or the president and more concerned with passing laws that repair the flawed and broken institutions that are demanding your attention. If you were working in any other capacity you would all be fired for dereliction of duty. When the members of any organization cannot get past the stage of norming and storming that group is doomed to failure.

I respectfully suggest that each and everyone of you read the duties of each branch of government as outlined in the Constitution. Then I recommend that you take back the powers invested in you and begin a process of repairing the ridiculous divisions that have left you unable to address the pressing problems that now face us. There are real people who feel forgotten and ignored who need your help. They can no longer accept your antics as an excuse for inaction. The grandstanding and partisanship and executive ordering needs to stop and that will only happen if you decide to finally do your jobs.

I am weary of knowing what you are going to say and do before you even show up for legislative sessions. You have only two minds, democrat and republican. You are puppets being animated by Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi and Donald Trump. Cut those strings and think for yourself, think about this country and its people. Take back your role and begin the work of providing us with the common sense laws that we need. Remind the president that his duty is to enforce the legislation, not to create it through sleight of hand. Let’s see who loves this country enough to become a profile in courage.

This Is What Keeps Me Awake At Night

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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In the beginning we were mostly very nice to one another. We came together not just as a nation, but as a worldwide community. We worried as much for the people of Italy as we did for ourselves. We applauded our healthcare workers at the end of their daily shifts. We found ways to do good things for people that we didn’t even know. We followed the rules and the precautions for staving off the virus with great care. We marveled at the flights of the Blue Angels as they flew over our city to thank those on the front lines of the battle with Covid-19. We grieved over every death and felt great compassion for those who became ill. We were willing to extend financial help for those who lost their jobs. Our sense of empathy was great and it felt good to be part of a human community that was so loving and caring.

Then some of us began to lose patience. The Lieutenant Governor of Texas suggested that we needed to go back to normal quickly. He blithely announced that he and other older Americans would be willing to die to help the young to reclaim their lives. The President of the United States appeared to grow weary of the daily briefings on the virus and the lack of a miracle disappearance of Covid-19 as he had so hopefully predicted. Armed groups asserted their right to freedoms including not being forced to wear masks in public. States began to reopen even as they ignored the guidelines of health professionals for doing so. Life seemingly resumed and then a Black man attempted to spend a twenty dollar bill that looked suspicious. The police were called and before an hour had passed that man lay dead as a result of overt brutality. Riots broke out first across the nation and eventually across the world. Our community spirit was finally rent in two.

As I sit in my home I number the days that I have been isolated. It is now well over 100 revolutions of the sun that have kept me inside save for a delightful three day interlude in which I drove around the Texas hill country and sat eight feet away from my daughter and her family for some much needed family connection. I have taught remote classes with my tiny band of students and I have enjoyed Zoom conferences with family and friends. Mostly though I have had to find ways to make my days meaningful as I do my best to help in the effort to eliminate the virus as much as possible.

At first I marveled at the kindness of humans but of late I have been deeply saddened by the selfishness and lack of compassion that I witness. I wonder why those who have pensions and savings and jobs that provide them with financial security have so little concern for those who are unemployed. Why are they not urging our president and Congress to continue to provide the jobless with the help they so desperately need during this time? Why does anyone think that it is a good idea to simply abandon thirteen percent of the American people who want to work but can’t find employment no matter how hard they try?

Our Black and Hispanic citizens are literally bearing the brunt of Covid-19. They are getting sick and dying in numbers far greater than the white population. So why would so many among us not even attempt to understand the frustrations that they are feeling? Does this really seem to be a time for accusing them of being responsible for the rise in cases of the virus when we know that people went to crowded bars and beaches? Does it make sense to smear the attempts of our Black citizens to demonstrate their frustrations and only see the small number of dissidents who have made the cause sometimes violent? Should all of those peacefully gathering for justice be viewed as a group of thugs? What is the reasoning for favoring hunks of metal or stone fashioned into icons glorifying people who fought to keep the ancestors of our Black neighbors enslaved over living breathing humans who are in great pain? Does this actually seem like a time to threaten dreamers with a reattempt at ridding our country of DACA so that they might once and for all be deported? What kind of people would celebrate a threat to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the middle of a pandemic? How has our society become so cruel that a wealthy old white man rides in his golf cart shouting “White Power” and our president applauds him? How can we continue to ignore our elderly who are virtual prisoners in their rooms in nursing homes because some of us refuse to do what is needed to end the rise of Covid-19 cases? What are we doing to help the mentally ill and addicted who have had an interruption of their therapies? These are the things that sadden me.

I honestly care little about myself. My days on this earth have not always been easy, but mostly they have been good. I am happy with my life and the people who have shared it with me. I have been most fortunate. I worry most about those who are truly suffering and feeling so alone. I grieve that my country is lost in a morass of ugliness and selfishness and unwillingness to spread both the wealth and the sacrifice in such a dire time. I see such difficult weeks ahead for our young whose lives are so upended and so uncertain. Their educations and their hopes and dreams and plans are on hold. Nothing is as it once was save for the lucky ones who have the gift of health and economic security that allows them to carry on as though the pandemic is little more than an inconvenient hoax created by forces that want to frighten us. For so many this moment is all too real, and it is for them that I worry. It is about them that I write. It is impossible for me to ignore them as though they do not matter.

I am weary because I feel as though I am shouting into the wind. I do not think that I have changed a single mind with the essays that I hoped would enlighten people to at least think a bit differently than usual. I see the divisiveness of beliefs growing harder and more immovable than ever before and that frightens me more than the possibility of becoming sick. Perhaps this moment in time is only the beginning of a series of events that will ultimately change the world. It may be that we will all have to endure much hardship to reach the other side. This is what keeps me awake at night because I do not believe that it had to be this way.

A Nation of Many Nations

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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Ours is an enormous country. Little wonder that it is often so difficult to hold all of the disparate regions and states together. We call ourselves the United States but in reality there has always been division based on geography, economics, demographics and other aspects of sociology and psychology. Even those who share common beliefs often have different interpretations of how to reach particular goals or create shared laws. Within a single state there will be cities and towns and neighborhoods with wildly varying political philosophies. We used to call ourselves a melting pot of diversity all blended together, but if truth be told there have always been lumps in that mixture that asked us to accept a single set of views. We’ve almost always known that there were exceptions to virtually every rule that we made. It’s rather difficult to be a country that purports to be a bastion of individualism while also insisting that we march in lockstep to certain tunes. Perhaps the very nature of our nation is to attract people who do not wish to be ruled by the whims of whoever happens to be in charge at any given moment.

Our land was stumbled upon by explorers who saw opportunity in its vast open spaces. They presumed that it was theirs for the taking because the original inhabitants did not appear to be as advanced as they were. Of course we can see in retrospect that it was faulty thinking to assume that nothing actually belonged to anyone person or group when there were no contracts or written compacts. Those original settlers were indeed the invaders even though we do not like to use that kind of language when speaking of them. Thus came hordes of people seeking relief from religious persecution, economic hardship, troubles with the law, the hopelessness of being second or third sons without the chance of inheritance, those with entrepreneurial spirit.  Here they saw a way to leave their troubles behind and live without the limitations placed on them in the old world. Over time they and their descendants reached all the way across the country from Atlantic to Pacific Ocean sometimes moving the original inhabitants who stood in their way.

Mistakes were made all the way around. Someone thought it was a good idea to use slave labor to work the fertile land. That was an abominable decision that was often cloaked in uncomfortable attempts to argue that the people forcefully brought from their homelands were actually better off than they would have otherwise been. There were presumptions that they were uncivilized and perhaps even too ignorant to even have the same feelings as the people who bought them and kept them as property by means of brute force. Even back at the beginning there were people who understood that such rationalizations were false and flew in the face of logic and Christian beliefs. Queen Isabella herself told Christopher Columbus that slavery was sinful when he offered to bring her a shipload of native people from the Indies as free labor. That was in the fifteenth century and yet people looked away when slavery became so ensconced in the economy that it was overlooked until the nineteenth century and the country that was barely one hundred years old broke out in civil war.

After the slaves were freed and the warring ended the country was wounded, broken, divided but the people did their best to patch things up. The freedom that the former slaves had gained  was only partially honored in some places. There were still those who viewed them as lesser beings. They were more often than not segregated from the rest of society, subjugated by laws that prohibited their freedoms and their rights. At the same time the country was growing. The Industrial Revolution created a need for more workers and so word was sent across Europe that America was the place to be. A flood of immigrants game from Germany, Sweden, Austria Hungary, Britain, Ireland, and Italy, a new wave of people who had lost hope of having a chance to prosper in their homelands. They sailed across the ocean in steamships with dreams of being free but their early days were often punctuated by hard work in dreary conditions while they were taunted by those who had been here before them.

The United States of America was a sleepy country with a vast expanse until World War I when the Yanks went to Europe to help in the war that was supposed to end all wars. Suddenly the whole world took notice of the ingenuity of the country that many had believed would never make it. The country finally decided to give women the right to vote even though John Adams’ wife Abigail had pleaded with him to fight to include the female half of the country when the ink was still wet on the Constitution signed by him and the other founding fathers. It seemed as though the United States was finally earning the respect it had so often desired.

The USA was now a power player and so a newspaper editor came up with the idea of finding a national anthem for a nation that had heretofore been just fine without one. He hosted a contest in which readers might suggest possibilities and then take a final vote on the candidates. That small group of Americans might have chosen America the Beautiful, The Battle Hymn of the Republic, God Bless America, or My Country Tis of Thee but by a narrow margin The Star Spangled Banner won. When a Congressman heard of the novel idea he sponsored a bill to make The Star Spangled Banner the national anthem. Finally in the 1920’s the United States had an official song to use at gatherings. It would eventually be played at ballgames, high school graduations and all kinds of events but few people actually knew how it had come about and what the words to it actually meant.

It was shortly after World War I and in the 1920’s that racism grew across the globe and at the same time monuments of Confederate generals were erected all across the south. With Jim Crow laws restricting Black citizens more than ever the statues served the twofold purpose of whitewashing the treasonous acts of the men they represented and intimidating Blacks who were still being shut out from full inclusion in the most basic rights of citizens. The Ku Klux Klan was flourishing and fear was once again being used as a weapon to keep Blacks from being fully embraced into society.

World War II and its aftermath brought the United States of America to its highest level of worldwide respect . While the rest of the world was repairing the damage from the battles of the war America was booming. It had the infrastructures and the money to invest in progress,  At the same time, almost a hundred years after being freed Black Americans still had not achieved that same rights as even the most recent immigrants from other countries enjoyed. After a years long struggle and much violence perpetrated against them a civil rights bill was finally passed in a divided Congress with pressure from a democrat President from Texas and the help of republicans from the north and midwest who would probably not recognize either the democrats or republicans of today.

Anyone who is paying attention knows the rest of the story. The immigrants continue to come from Asia and the Middle East and from Mexico and South America. The diversity of our nation has grown and grown and as it has many have become less and less inclined to appreciate or understand how much the new members of our country are just like the people who first came to the shores of this nation at its very beginnings and through the ensuing years with similar hopes and dreams. Our Black citizens continue to struggle from inequities that we too often refuse to see perhaps because admitting how much they have been wronged is a fate too painful to endure. It would mean looking at our history with an honesty that shatters so many of our pretty visions. 

We are once again divided. This time it is between those who would build walls or send children brought here illegally back to places they have never seen and those who believe that we should welcome the people and cultures that seem to enrich our nation. We argue over whether or not Black citizens are being treated unfairly and discuss their protests abstractly as either lawless or peaceful. Some see confederate monuments and place names as history and others view them as an offense to human decency. There are those who would drop the Affordable Care Act in the midst of a pandemic and those who want to end such discussions once and for all with a national health insurance program that assures good health for all. We even quibble over whether or not we should have to wear masks to prevent the spread of the virus that is exerting its power over us. We question whether a national anthem that was selected on a whim is more representative of our country than the freedom of people to use it to shed light on a problem that they believe we all must face. We think that fixing our wounded nation is a matter of this or that, a simple dichotomy of rights and wrongs that pits us against each other.

Perhaps if we all took the time to move beyond the noise and the chatter and to simply concentrate on the issues at hand we might finally find a way to get things right. Perhaps a beginning might be to admit that we are not a melting pot at all and we really should not be. Instead we are a beautiful salad of individuals each of whom add flavor and beauty to the glorious mix. We are a nation built from many nations. If we begin to honor that idea and strive to value each and every person we will all share in the wealth of the ideas set out in our Declaration of Independence. July Fourth will belong to every American when we provide its ideals with compassion and equity.  

Dear Sir

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

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President Donald J. Trump                                                                                                            White House                                                                                                                      Washington D.C.                                                                                                                          United States of America

Dear Sir,

I am an American who loves this country with every fiber of my being even as I realize that it has problems which must be addressed. I am only a few years younger than you are. When we were  children the world was recovering from a terrible world war. Our elders had been heroes fighting in Europe and the Pacific for the very existence of democracy and justice. We grew up hearing of the horrors of autocratic leaders that lead to the murder of millions of innocent souls. What we heard less about was the unfair treatment of citizens in our own country whose ancestors had once been slaves. We were young and lived in a white bubble with our privilege of freedom to go wherever we wanted whenever we wanted. Only now and again did we witness hints of the inequities in our society and so in our minds the America of our youth was a beautiful thing, a safe and lovely world. We did not yet know of the injustices that some of our fellow citizens with darker skin were enduring even as we reveled in our own safety.

I was born and raised in Houston, Texas. My father was a college educated man who provided our family with luxuries that I took for granted until he died suddenly when I was only eight years old. I quickly learned what it was like to worry that my family’s most basic needs would be difficult to meet, but even in our greatly reduced economic situation I knew that we were better off than many Americans and so I began to better understand the plight of the poor and suffering.

I was mostly sheltered from the racism that existed nearby me. It was only when we would ride a bus downtown to enjoy a Saturday of shopping for sales in the basement of Foley’s department store that I saw the water fountains and restrooms marked with signs for “whites” and “coloreds.” I found myself wondering why the black people on the bus had to sit away from the rest of us. I knew them only from such brief encounters because they lived in neighborhoods segregated from mine. I only saw them when they came to clean the houses or work in the yards of white friends. Even as a child I felt an element of mystery and injustice in their situation but nobody really spoke of such things with little ones. They must have believed that we were too ignorant to see the evidence of prejudice that was so clear to me.

The first I heard of the civil rights movement was just before my father died. We had gone to visit my grandparents in Arkansas and there was talk of integrating the schools. My father and grandfather would sit on the front porch of the house discussing the pros and cons of the situation while I was shuttled away into the kitchen with my grandmother. I suppose they thought I was too young to hear about such things but I got enough information to begin to question so much about what we were doing to an entire group of people who had long suffered from abuse.

By the time I was in high school the civil rights marches, demonstrations and sit-ins were in full force. I watched the progress with great joy and anticipation even as I heard whispers from adults who were worried that the world as they had known it was about to change for the worst. There were great divisions in our country even as a sense of hopefulness began to spread from sea to shining sea.

In college my friend Claudia and I were active in the continuing civil rights movement. We marched and campaigned and lived in the hope that the stains of slavery and segregation would be eradicated forever. We listen to Mohammed Ali speak on our campus. He was still Cassius Clay back then and he would soon be expressing his right to freedom by refusing to submit to the military draft. It was his way of bringing attention to the inequities that were still holding our nation back from the greatness that had been the set forth in the ideals in our Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation. We were still struggling to achieve a goal that should have been insisted upon as far back as 1776 but was compromised to satisfy those who used slaves for their economic betterment.

I entered the adult world thinking that we had resolved the problems of our Black citizens. I went about living my life and created my own little bubble of satisfaction. The world seemed to be a very happy place for everyone. I welcomed Black children to my neighborhood and I taught them in the schools where I worked. I shared stories with my Black colleagues and entertained them in my home. It was not until a group of my Black students and I prepared for a school sponsored civil rights tour of the south that I began to hear of the inequities and fears that continued to stalk even the most highly educated and economically secure Black people that I know. In transparent conference after conference they related their experiences and I knew then that we had left so much work undone.

So here we are now in a state of unrest in the midst of a pandemic as people not just in the United States but across the globe insist that somehow we must begin the dialogue and the processes of eliminating racism that is still inherent within our systems. We know that we cannot dislodge discrimination in all individual hearts, but we can and should attempt to eradicate it from our public institutions. The Black Lives Matter movement is not about the exclusion of all other lives but an insistence that we once and for all must admit that too often Black lives do not matter as much as ours. When athletes take a knee during the National Anthem they are not attempting to dishonor veterans but rather to bring attention to the reality that we are often prone to look away when Black lives are undervalued. We do not see such incidents as our problem because after all we are good people who love everyone. Sadly by ignoring the situation we contribute to the abuse. Just as we would report adults who mistreat children, so too must we take action against people and systems that are cavalier with the lives of our Black citizens. 

Mr. President, the throngs of people in the street are generally peaceful and their cause is a beautiful thing. They are protesting for the very soul of this country and in many ways they are more intent on making America great that your supporters. They are not thugs or destroyers or looters. The millions of earnest souls across the country are risking their own safety in an attempt to rebuild and redefine the systems that continue to ignore the facts surrounding the history of slavery and segregation. They are drawing attention to the racism that continues in far too many corners of the country.

If you truly want to make America great then I implore you to set your divisive rhetoric aside and serve as a model of compassion and understanding. We are all hurting and we desperately need a leader who is willing to bring us together, not taunt us to fight one another. This is a powerful moment in our nation’s history when we might once and for all admit to the egregious mistakes of the past and move forward by repairing the institutions that continue to ignore the discrimination that breeds in their midst. Truly loving this country means that we will not enable its flaws to fester and grow. Loving the United States of America means coming together to repair the damage of four hundred years of looking the other way. What a glorious thing it would be for all of us to march into the Promised Land together at last. Seize the opportunity to listen and to hear the cries for what they truly are. 

Your sincerely,                                                                                                                                         A proud citizen of the United States of America

 

(Please Note: For those who may think that my naiveté knows no bounds, I do understand that this letter is a dream but it outlines realities and hopes that I do not think any of us can afford to ignore. We must move beyond sound bites and self interests and insist on doing the right thing. This must also include those in the halls of power. Let freedom ring.)

We Are Losing Some Good Ones

Published on by Sharron BurnettLeave a comment

 

Life goes on even as we struggle through days of watching the virus find its way into every corner. We continue our routines even as we watch protesters crying out for justice. Birthdays come marking the completion of another year of life. Easter reminds us to be hopeful. Graduations in different forms than we are accustomed to seeing celebrate hard work and accomplishment. Our planet dutifully rotates on its axis bringing us new days and nights. We revolve around the sun moving from spring to summer just as though everything is as normal as can be. People whom we have loved and cherish die, some from Covid-19 and others from disease or accident.

We muddle along for the most part, adapting to our present situation, but death gives us pause. It is perhaps more difficult to accept than ever. It is a kind of insult added to our injury. Covid-19 forces us to endure it without the rituals or the comfort of hugs and human touch that we have come to expect in such moments. Of all the things that we miss about our days of isolation and uncertainty people are surely at the top of our list. Most of us are working so hard to keep the ones we love safe and virus free, so when one of them dies no matter the cause it is almost too much to bear. 

I have watched from inside my living room as people very special to me have endured the deaths of loved ones. I grieved for a teaching colleague who lost her beloved mother at the beginning of the pandemic, not from the disease itself but from the completion of a long life. My friend continues to long for the beautiful woman who taught her how to love and gave her a lifelong and beautiful relationship with God. So too does another friend long for her sister who left this world all too early only this week. A young man that I know is heartbroken over the death of a dear friend who will not be able to share the joys of senior year in high school with the rest of the class. 

I watched with great sorrow as two of my high school classmates and friends lost their beloved brother, John King. He had been sick for a very long time but he had overcome his disabilities again and again with a valiant spirit. He was a dedicated and admired teacher, a man who devoted forty eight years of his life to guiding the young into wisdom and grace. His students adored him just as his family did. He will be quietly laid to rest this week but his legacy will be celebrated for years to come by those who knew of his dedication to education and creating a better world. He was an optimist in a time of great cynicism and his example will live in all of  the hearts that he touched. 

A man who attended my high school while I was there has also died. I did not know him well but I knew of him. His name was Steve Waldner but his friends called him Wes. He was a member of one of those large Catholic families from the Baby Boom era. He lived across the street from Our Lady of Mt Carmel Catholic Church and School. He was a sweet and happy fellow, someone people called a nice guy. My husband, Mike, would eventually meet Steve and learn just how amazing he had turned out to be.

Mike was loaned out to the United Way one year as part of their program to use the talents of executives from businesses to help with the various causes that it supports. That’s when he met Steve who was the director of the Bay Area United Way. The two of them hit it off immediately. Both had attended Catholic schools and both were avid alumni of the University of Houston. Steve had first graduated from the University of St. Thomas and then earned a Master’s of Social Work at the University of Houston. He and Mike shared a love of Catholic education, the Basilian fathers, the University of Houston, and the work being done to help the less fortunate in our midst.

Mike learned of the devastating consequences of addiction and homelessness from Steve who worked tirelessly and compassionately to be of service to those who are often ignored and misunderstood. Mike was impressed with Steve’s optimism even in the face of human tragedy. Here was a man so incredibly devoted to the causes of those who were lost and broken. I began to learn so much about someone who had shared the hallways of my school with me without our ever getting to know each other. I was humbled by the stories of his work and his dedication.

Steve Waldner was eventually recognized for his contributions to the downtrodden of the city of Houston. The Department of Social Work at his alma mater, the University of Houston named him as one of their most outstanding graduates. He even taught classes for a time at the University of Houston campus at Clear Lake. He continued to give of his talents in work that focused on those with disabilities and disorders of the body and mind. Like his father before him he was dedicated to being a point of light in some of the darkest corners of our city.

John King and Steve Waldner will be missed for their magnificent contributions to the betterment of our world. In our dark days we long for such shining lights of selflessness and devotion. Both men used their time on this earth to touch the minds and hearts of countless individuals who became better for knowing them. We might all take a cue from them for leading our own lives.

It is difficult to lose good people anytime, but somehow it is doubly so in a moment like the present. It saddens us to know that we are losing the best among us when we need them so dearly. We will remember these good souls and use the models of their lives to guide us and we will comfort their loved ones who have been left behind. May these angels who dedicated themselves to love and service rest in peace.