In the Wake of the School Shootings, I'm
Trying to Convince Myself that Anne Frank Was Right: Good People Are Still Out
There
By Diana L. Chapman
First, a man shot his girlfriend to
death on the street behind my house, then killed himself.
I knew him and his kids. I also knew
that Johnny O'Kane's actions had torn away the tethers of humanity, leaving two
families in utter despair.
Still, I believed. It seems ever since I
read the Diary of Anne' Frank when I was 12, I trusted Frank's words she wrote
before dying in the Holocaust that people were still good at heart. I believe
that despite everything I've written and seen first as a journalist, now as a
blogger, anything from murders, baby kidnappings to robberies. I believe that
even now, with the horrendous shooting at a Newton, Connecticut elementary school
where on Friday Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old, brilliant autistic man, burst into
Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 20 children, ages 6 and 7, and six adults.
I believe this while knowing there have
been a string of brutal attacks in China over the past two years where men have
entered schools and literally chopped and hacked away at youngsters -- killing
up to 21 and the youngest being four -- with weapons such as axes, hammers,
cleavers and knives - the latest being the same day as Sandy Hook when a
36-year-old attacked children, ages six to 12 at a primary school -- succeeding in cutting off fingers and severing
ears -- and seriously injuring two other students who remain hospitalized.
By now, as so many journalists are, I
should be a cynical, skeptical woman who walks with a jaded heart and the
piercing knowledge that the world, is in essence, upside down. I can't bear to
think about the pain those Sandy Hook parents are suffering--tonight, in the
morning and in every waking moment, knowing some of those tiny bodies were
riddled with more than 11 bullet holes from an assault rifle.
But here I am still clinging to Anne's
words, statements she started penning at age 13 while in hiding from the
Gestapo, some of which are like pulling on a quilt of warmth and soothing
protection.
"It's really a wonder that I
haven't dropped all my ideals, because they seem so absurd and impossible to
carry out," Anne wrote in her diary while her Jewish family lived in
unbearable conditions during World War II. "Yet I keep them, because in
spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at
heart."
Once her family and others were
discovered, they were forced into concentration camps where nearly all their
lives were extinguished, including Anne's. Her father, Otto, survived, found
his daughter's diary and shared it with the world.
There must be a reason he did that -- a
reason for us to lay our heads on when the world has once again gone
"crazy" as she says and worked its way into another one of its
darkest corners in history. We've been layered with tragedy upon tragedy across
our country.
Rampaging gunmen repeatedly committed
shootings of the innocents in the past six months alone; two adults killed this
week in an Oregon Mall as people shopped for the holidays; 70 shot and 12
killed in July at a Colorado theater as movie-goers settled into a night of
watching good versus evil in the new Batman flick -- and now the perilous
attack at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut.
But there were so, so many even before
that.
It seems we are not any closer to an end
of this insane mayhem and misery, horror tilting our nation repeatedly to yet
another disaster and now we've lost Noah, Emilie, Catherine, Jessica, Olivia,
Ana, Jessica and 13 other elementary students who will never celebrate another
Christmas, another birthday or read another book.
If we listen to Anne, it is time to
change. It's time to commit to gun control. It's time to give support to
families dealing with the horrors of mental illness and not just run away. We
can no longer wait.
The deaths, especially of such little
children who were just beginning to flourish and bloom like beautiful cherry
trees, defies our sensibilities.
"There is an urge and rage in
people to destroy, to kill, to murder," Anne wrote, "and until
mankind, without exception, undergoes great change, wars will be waged,
everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and
disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again."
With all our rage and grief, we might
want to reflect back on the wisdom of Anne, who seemed to grasp and comprehend
matters beyond her years. "How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a
single moment before starting to improve the world."
We
no longer need to wait. We need to take advantage of those that are
still good at heart that are left in the world.
Take for instance, Gene Rosen, 69, a
grandfather and retired psychologist, who found six small children huddled in
his driveway immediately after the Sandy Hook shooting who told him they
couldn't go back to school because their teacher had been shot. They had
escaped, a boy told him.
Rosen didn't wait even though he didn't
know exactly what happened. He took the children into his house, gave them toys
and juice and listened to their stories about their teacher being shot. He called
every one of their parents, who came and picked them up.
He later blubbered on the air about how
brave the children were and how he hoped to see, cherish and hug them all
again. He said he loved them.
Rosen is the reason I still believe in
Anne's words. He gives me hope. And "Where there's hope," Anne wrote,
"there's life."
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