 |
Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday August 5, 2001 Volume IV Number 31 |
FOCUS - Painting the Breeze
I’ve always wanted my very own flag pole. I’ve mentioned it more than once. It’s on the “someday” list.
Mr. Dunton was my high school Mr. Holland (as in Mr. Holland’s Opus). “Mr. D.” we called him. Every day, Mr. D. sat behind an upright piano banging out melodies and harmonies until we teenagers got it right. In a gravelly voice, raspy from too many years’ pushing high school kids into vocal self-awareness, he hit the pitch squarely, nailing the timing and proper annunciation, together now, think diction, articulation, light on the “T” and the “S,” he’d holler, support from the diaphragm (he’d inflate his big barrel chest, and push up against his abdomen with two wide open palms for effect), and we’d fill the room with rich melodious sound.
Whenever he could, our balding Mr. D. would boast that his choir (well over a hundred voices) included most of the football team and the cheer leading squad. That was an effective recruiting factoid for kids to ponder over at the Jr. High. Everyone wanted in on Mr. D.’s choir. One must audition, he’d warn. That fearsome audition was a high school rite of passage in our little town.
Thanks to Mr. D., in a four year span I pretty well memorized every Broadway musical to date. Even now, when I hear one of those old melodies on the elevator or while waiting on hold for the phone company, I can fill in the lyric for you, if you like. And if I’m in a certain kind of mood, I might break out in song right there in public.
But the best of those lyrics were the patriotic tunes that galvanized our suburban community and gave us a sense of national pride. Sure, it was the fifties, still aglow over a decisive victory in a devastating global war. Our President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Five Star General, commander of the Normandy Invasion, led us in the new campaign against Communism. He was our noble Commander in Chief now waging a quiet battle against a distant enemy in a “Cold War.” When the neighborhood gathered standing room only in the gymnasium of our high school, and we lifted our voices under the keen direction of Mr. D., you could see the tears in the eyes of our parents when we sang in harmony,
What difference if I hail from North or South -
Or from the East or West.
My heart is filled with love for all of these.
I only know I swell with pride, and deep within my breast,
I thrill to see Old Glory paint the breeze.
This is my country!
It was those lyrics that got me thinking in metaphor; Old Glory painting the breeze. (Who thought of that one? What a great picture.) I could see it. Red, white and blue. Snapping in the breeze from atop a tall slender pole, pull lines in the wind ringing out against the galvanized steel and at the crown of the pole, as a sentinel guarding the flag, a polished brass bald eagle, wings open wide.
This is my country!
So I want one of those flag poles in my front yard.
* * * * * * *
Jacqueline Marris, 17, and her friend of the same age, on a summer time Thursday night in Lancaster, California, sat in a parked car with two high school boys well after midnight in a remote part of town when a convicted sex-offender and carjacker, Roy Dean Ratliff, sought after by police in both Nevada and California on more sex-offence charges, banged on the window of their vehicle with the butt of a pistol, ordered the boys outside, took their money at gunpoint and then somehow bound the young men with duct tape and left them at the scene, racing into the night with tèe two teenaged girls.
Ratliff kidnapped the girls and held them at gunpoint for over twelve hours. Only the two young women know the full extent of Ratliff’s unutterable crimes that night.
The nation’s attention has been focused on pedophile cases and sexual assaults on the young for awhile now. Perhaps it is related somehow to the horrible scandals involving some wayward priests in the Church of Rome; perhaps it’s just slow news in the summertime that breeds a puerile fascination with depraved criminals and their unspeakable obsessions. It’s not as though more children are victimized this year than before. We are paying more attention, it seems. We are more “aware.”
So our governor instituted a welcome program called the “AMBER Alert.” It’s an acronym for “America’s Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response,” put in place a week after the kidnapping and murder of little Samantha Runnion.
The alert puts out an immediate description of the suspect, any vehicles involved, the names and descriptions of the victims and their possible whereabouts into a network of public media and law-enforcement organizations and Cal-Trans billboards in an unprecedented rapid response to a crime in progress. Thanks to the Amber Alert, Bonnie Hernandez, on a her routine trip to work as a Kern County animal control officer, spotted the white Ford Bronco with Ratcliff and the two girls inside that morning, and alerted police.
Marshalling all of the department’s resources, a helicopter spotted the vehicle and the rest is now a matter of national public record. In a remote part of town, the Bronco was surrounded by police, and when Ratcliff climbed out of the car, gun in hand, officers opened fire. Within seconds, the outlaw was dead. The girls liberated.
The nation celebrated.
The celebration was nearly universal. In offices, on the street, in homes all across America, people cheered. High-fived. The officers involved in the shooting admired as heroes in a war against perversion.
Our cumbersome system of justice, despised by so many for its myriad of exceptions and technicalities and deal-making and delays, for the impossible burdens it places on the prosecution and the guilty parties who escape punishment for their crimes; this time, in the case of Roy Dean Ratcliff, the entire criminal justice system was short-circuited in a hail of justifiable bullets. There would be no defense attorneys arguing for mercy or temporary insanity or psychological excuses for the crimes this man committed. No courtroom dates. No bail. No preliminary motions. No request for change in venue. No jury selection. No F. Lee Bailey or Johnny Cochran. No daily gavel to gavel radio coverage dominating the airwaves. It’s over.
Just a few weeks before when Samantha’s mother publicly and convincingly blamed a jury for failing to convict her daughter’s murderer in an earlier trial, the nation sympathized. There was wide agreement that too many criminals escape justice for flimsy reasons. They are set free to strike again.
But not this time.
Justice for Ratcliff was swift. Decisive. Absolute. Irrevocable. Final.
“So how do you feel about Mr. Ratcliff?” asked a local affiliate reporter in an interview with seventeen year old Jacqueline Marris just hours after the shooting and her rescue.
She smiled broadly, “What’s there to say? …. He’s dead.”
* * * * * * * *
It also became an occasion for talk show hosts to entertain the opinions of callers-in to debate the question of curfews and boundaries and parental involvement in the lives of their children and the widespread irresponsible behavior of teenagers in general.
Some are appalled at parents who seemed indifferent about children out there in cars parked in remote places in the wee hours of the morning, vulnerable to the Roy Dean Ratcliffs of the world. Others seem to think it’s impossible for parents to maintain any semblance of control over seventeen-year-olds so why even try? After all, didn’t we all do stupid things at age seventeen?
Somehow we survived. So will they.
Most of them.
So lighten up, they tell us.
* * * * * * * *
But we can’t lighten up.
It’s a sad realization that there are children in our world without parents who would willingly give their lives if it meant the protection of their child. Parents who wait up in the living room until their children are home safe and sound. Every child should know they have that kind of parent.
Neglect. Indifference. Apathy. These are not the guiding principles of good parenting.
There’s nothing casual about parenthood.
The lessons of the teenage years can be harsh. But they are real.
So when the County Animal Control Officer Bonnie Hernandez was asked if she had any advice for the girls who survived their twelve hour abduction at the hands of a hardened criminal, she said, “Don’t be out so late at night.”
* * * * * * * *
My friend Steve did it.
He
got hold of about fifty feet of galvanized steel, and raised his flag pole,
painted a gloss white, right there in the front yard, at the center of the
turn-about in his driveway. You can see it from way across town.
It wasn’t easily done.
He dropped a wide hole in the ground, placed two standards upright and filled the footing with concrete. Then he assembled the fifty foot pole, laying it on the ground with the base attached between the two standards with an axis bolt (see diagram). He then attached a line mid-way up the pole back over the footing and then to his truck equipped with a winch about twenty yards back. With a crew of helpers, he lifted the heavy pole off the ground and started the winch, pulling the line and raising the pole on the axis at the base. With levels, and two more bolts, as the pole set tall and straight, he inserted two more bolts holding the pole in place on the footing.
The ropes and pulleys fell into place.
Steve clipped a fresh new flag, Red, White and
Blue, to the line and pulled hand over hand until the flag reached the top,
clicking against the pulley just under a bright brass spread eagle… now fifty
feet in the air. He tied the line to a shoulder high clip on the pole. Then
he stepped back, looked up, and smiled. Hands on his hips. He looked over at
his wife. She smiled, too.
Last night, we stood at the base of Steve’s flag pole, all six of us, and looked up at Old Glory snapping in the breeze.
I couldn’t help myself. I broke into a rousing chorus of “You’re a Grand Old Flag.” The others joined in.
I gotta get me one of those.
* * * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
I’m not so sure I’m comfortable with this unbridled glee over the shooting death of one more depraved criminal. I do not condemn the outcome of the fiery confrontation. I am relieved. But I think it is an occasion for sadness and grief over the harm one lost man can do, not an occasion for jubilation over his death. We celebrate the rescue. We applaud the courageous efforts of police officers, many of whom are fathers, who willingly step into harm’s way to rescue a child. They are worthy of heartfelt commendation.
And while, as a father, I would have done what I could to prevent my teenage daughter from being alone in a car in a remote place out of town after dark, the fact that these kids were out there did not give this wanton criminal a license to violate children. He is fully responsible for his actions.
We parents will remain vigilant. We will pay attention. And we will pray.
And we will be thankful for friends and neighbors and educators and law enforcement officials who sacrifice for the protection of our children. From the armed police officer to the diligent teacher to the volunteer crossing guard – we are all grateful.
It is their courage and bravery and care that inspire our love for the Red, White and Blue. They make our homeland free. We swell with pride, and thrill to see Old Glory paint the breeze.
Someday soon, in my front yard.
Long may it wave.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2001
Special Thanks to my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
LeaderFOCUS is a service of Good Stewardship Associates
|
|