Saturday, May 01, 1999
Youths with big hearts provide hope
BY KRISTA RAMSEY
The Cincinnati Enquirer
This was not the column I planned to write. There were plenty of other things to think about this week. Teacher cuts. Dropping teen birth rates. But I cannot stop thinking of you.
All 49 of you, sitting in the hushed sanctuary of Temple Sholom on Tuesday night, your faces shining. Your parents casting sideways glances at you, so filled with pride. Your little brothers and sisters showing me their name tags, reminding me they're related to you.
You were hope for me that night. You were light in a very dark place.
For 34 years the American Jewish Committee of Cincinnati has given the Simon Lazarus Jr. Human Relations Award to teen-agers who perform outstanding community service. It was never more meaningful than Tuesday night.
All week, the world seemed centered on Littleton, Colo. Journalists rushed in after two high school students massacred their classmates and a teacher. Everyone claimed to be looking for “answers.”
But the answers weren't in Littleton. They were sitting in front of me at Temple Sholom.
Enough of the details
Whatever pity I have for the misguided boys who did the shooting, I have no desire to interview people who knew them. I do not care what bumper sticker they had on their cars, or the names of their girlfriends.
It is one thing to analyze what went wrong in this situation, to look for patterns and prevent them from happening again. It is a far different thing to continue this national obsession of tracking down every detail of the lives of sick and violent people, purely for the sake of horrifying ourselves and dramatizing them.
I say let the lessons be learned, but their names be forgotten. I say let us save our probing questions for young people like you:
Kasey Fread, from Little Miami High School, what makes you help a family in which two small boys and their mother suffer from a deadly genetic disorder? Where do you get the kind of courage to keep going back to a situation for which there may be no happy ending?
And Colette Neirouz of Finneytown High School, just how did your parents raise a teen-ager who would volunteer at a homeless shelter, befriending a man battling alcoholism? Of him, you wrote, “I witnessed him being sober for one month. I supported him being sober for four months. I celebrated with him for being sober six months.”
Is this not drama? Is this not rich emotion? Is this not news?
Yet Barbara Glueck, area director of the local American Jewish Committee, told me, “I had trouble getting coverage of this event.”
The better story
The fault lies, not in the value of your story, but in the shallowness of our interest. All of ours. And we journalists — are we not keen observers and good enough storytellers to mine out the beauty, courage and emotion from stories like yours?
I am not speaking in simplistic terms, of mindlessly covering “positive” events or balancing the coverage of evil with coverage of good. I am saying young people like you are the better story — more complex, more instructional and inherently more interesting.
It takes far more courage to live in this world and struggle valiantly with its problems, than fire a spray of bullets and end your own life.
It takes a far stronger brand of intelligence to make progress, rather than simply make news.
Journalists all over the country will descend on Littleton, Colo., April 20, 2000, to update their story.
There are far better stories.
In four years, LaVaughn Daniel of Finneytown will graduate from college and start medical school. The pediatric clinic she hopes to open for low-income families sounds like news to me.
Next spring, Allison Heck will graduate from Wyoming High School. Her sterling principles and religious faith have already led to service projects around this city, and the world. What can she possibly do next?
Those are the questions I'm holding on to. And you — you brave, modest, good-hearted American kids — are the ones with the answers.
Krista Ramsey's column runs on Saturdays.
Krista Ramsey's column appears on Saturdays. Write her at the Enquirer, 312 Elm St. Cincinnati 45202.
RAMSEY ARCHIVE