I go back several times a year to oversee ongoing building projects. My long-term aim is to bring the rest of the hospital up to the standards of the children’s unit, as every patient deserves to be treated with dignity and compassion.
It is true to say that my life is far richer now than ever before. You cannot do better than to see a child smile and say “thank you” when all you have done is try to make him a little more comfortable. My heart goes out to the deeply caring staff that give their all in Gambia, resisting the urge to flee to better prospects in the West.
One day after returning from Gambia, I picked up my mail and found in it a tattered letter. The letter was from an illiterate and very poor man who had traveled at great cost back to the hospital from his village to see me. Finding I was not there, he asked for my address and then engaged someone to write to me. The letter simply said “Thank you for loving my son.”
What greater tribute can anyone want in life?
OLIVER STONE
Guided by Ghosts
Oliver Stone has won five Golden Globes and three Academy Awards for his films (Platoon, Born on the 4th of July, and Midnight Express), and has been nominated almost too many times for too many different awards to count.Parts of his first book, A Child’s Night Dream, ended up in the East River when its author, consumed with anguish over his experiences, threw them into the water, together with certificates for his Purple Heart and Bronze Star for “extraordinary acts of courage under fire,” the medals he won in combat in Vietnam. Always controversial—for when is there a time when strong political views are not the subject of angry debate?—Oliver Stone has rocked complacency with his challenges to, among other things, the official story that “explains” the death of President John F. Kennedy. He’s also exposed many a raw nerve with his autobiographical and semiautobiographical portrayal of war and its effects.
Oliver Stone’s mother taught him to be kind to animals: he was one of the first to sign a petition asking NASA to stop sending monkeys into space, a campaign PETA eventually won. Caged animals even appear as metaphors for his mentally anguished self in his earliest film work, Last Year in Vietnam, a portrayal of his life as a returned (wounded) veteran who is tormented by what he has seen of war and is trying to make sense of his life. He is a powerful bear of a man who belongs in this book because he will be damned if he’ll let history slide away unnoticed.
I grew up believing in service to my country, and that if we go to war we go to war together. On top of which, I felt strongly, and still do, that ignoring your obligations is wrong. So when the Vietnam War began, I went. I believed what we were being told by the government and the press. I believed in a communist threat. It took me several years to wake up. Not that I came back a protestor: I didn’t. I came back neutral and alienated, wounded inside and out, tormented by all I’d seen: the carnage, the misery, the suffering, and the aggression of the human race.
I was in the Twenty-Fifth Infantry Division and First Cavalry Division, and saw quite a bit of combat in the ground war during 1967 and 1968. I wasn’t at the My Lai massacre, but I saw that kind of behavior. Our mission had become distorted, reduced to a survival course. What with the beginning of race issues, and small-scale mutinies, where enlisted men were refusing to take orders from the officers, and the drugs, everything was starting to go wrong. What can I say? Vietnam is a state of mind, what happened there is still going on somewhere else. This both frustrates and saddens me. People now are too young to remember the damage of that war and haven’t elected to study it, or those old enough to remember, don’t. It could have been a war that brought about a collective shift in perspective, but instead, in the nineties, you could see the march to war beginning all over again. The war in Iraq is a totally logical result of our aggression mentality turned outward.
When I got back, there was little support for veterans.Very few had heard of posttraumatic stress disorder. I was very lucky to be reintegrated back into society, to find my first wife, to get an education. Lots of soldiers didn’t make it back at all or never found their way after they did. I landed in New York and enrolled in film school. It wasn’t a knowingly pivotal decision, but some friends encouraged me. I’d always liked movies as a kid, and the GI Bill offered a subsidy and New York University was close to home, so off I went. I couldn’t believe someone was going to pay me to watch movies! It took time to learn the process of making a film: I started out writing many screenplays that were never produced, held other jobs, but I knew from the strong reactions I got, pro and con, to my book Last Year in Vietnam that I could make something important for the screen. Platoon is semiautobiographical, and when veterans saw it, many were deeply moved. Here was someone from the ranks willing to tell the story straight, from the ground point of view. This was not the same war story we were officially hearing. I felt in 1986, when the film came out, it was a great moment for America, that we were ready to move beyond what we were being fed, ready to get to the raw truth of it all, somewhat like what’s going on finally in Iraq.
There’s a tendency to denature and sanitize things and to come up with the easily digestible answer, a sort of virtual reality. Hitler said, “the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it,” and, sadly, he was right. The danger is in becoming a nation of sheep, each of us a rubberstamp, a cipher, an unengaged and unthinking person rather than a participant in the democratic process. But real democracy is about listening to all the arguments, learning to think for ourselves, and resisting being spoon-fed by the politicians and the press. That’s the Socratic method. I can’t think of anything that is more important than the pursuit of truth, even if you have to wade through blood and dirt to get to it, even if pursuing it requires sacrifice and effort. It’s my hope that my films help.
All life is change, but we’re destined to repeat history if we don’t study the past, especially our history of war. Some people think we should let the ghosts rest and that we shouldn’t show the blood and guts of reality, but I disagree. Everyone who watches films such as mine is strong enough to take something from the bad energy as well as the good. As for ghosts, I believe in them: they have important stories to tell if we’ll just listen.
HELEN THOMAS
Keeping Presidents Honest
I first heard Helen Thomas speak at the memorial service for a mutual friend, her contemporary, the humanitarian reporter Ann Cottrell Free. Like Ann’s, Helen’s career has spanned the Great Depression and taken her into the White House. Both women cared about the poor, the oppressed, about fair play, and democracy, both took no prisoners when pursuing a story. Helen Thomas is called “The First Lady of the Press,” and known for her sharp, probing questions, ones she has asked of every president since John F. Kennedy as well as of their press secretaries. For forty-six years she has sat in the front row at all White House news conferences, and until the current Bush administration broke with tradition, had always spoken the last words, “Thank you, Mr.President.” A servant of the truth with a probing questioning style President Ford described as “acupuncture,” she is fond of saying that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. Her views on how to make a difference in life suit this book perfectly.
When I was a sophomore in high school, we had to write something for English class about news reporting. I can’t remember what it was, but my report got into the school paper.
I saw my byline and said, “This is for me!” In my view, I’d arrived. I knew that if I chose reporting as a career, I’d have the kind of life that would allow me to indulge my curiosity, keep me learning my whole life through. There would be work before me every day because something happens every day. Reporting would allow me a sense of independence while I was out there getting the story, and it would satisfy my drive to achieve something good. I’d found what I wanted to do. I’d recommend that to anyone: do what will make you happy in life, happy at work, because if you aren’t happy, you’re not in good shape.
Having been bitten by the rep
orting bug, I took it with me to Wayne State University. There were no real journalism classes then, but I loved English and I loved history and that’s what I needed for my job. Since that time, I’ve covered history every day. I wasn’t the first woman reporter, women have been in the newspaper business for 150 years, but, nevertheless, when I began it was very much a man’s world.Women were encouraged to be teachers and nurses, as those were considered secure jobs. Barriers to us were up all over the place. Women couldn’t belong to press clubs, for instance. Those barriers had to be overcome and eventually they were, but not without great passion and effort. Suffragettes chained themselves to the White House fence, were arrested, carried off; there was a struggle for women to get the vote. There will always be struggles.
I’ve had disappointments in my time, of course. If you’re never disappointed, you’re not alive! But I never let things get me down; you can’t expect life to be a smooth run. What’s important is not to let setbacks keep you from moving ahead.
If you’re persistent and never deviate from your path, and if you’re in the right, meaning you’re doing something legal and moral, you’ll be okay. Speaking the truth is my Gold Standard. Unless you’re blocked by a secretive government, you can always seek and find the truth, and you must never stop trying to get it.
I’ve been so lucky to pick a profession where I get educated every day. News is news and as long as there are people on this planet, there will be an interest in what’s going on. To report honestly is a public service, I can contribute something, inform people. A healthy democracy requires an informed people, facts make a country safe, and facts protect people. The questions I ask aren’t just my questions, they’re the people’s questions.
As a member of the press, I carry a responsibility to ask them.
Since becoming a reporter, I’ve been to nine inaugurations, all of them moments of great hope. All presidents mean well as they come to office, but then a funny thing happens on the way to the forum.
Nevertheless, I firmly believe that democracy works. For instance, President Kennedy’s assassination was the most traumatic event in my career and could have resulted in a time of great political upheaval. Yet, the transition to President Lyndon Johnson was very smooth; he stepped into office immediately.
There was no coup d’etat, our government simply went on about its business. However, democracy isn’t working so well in this administration. We have a president who can’t explain this war in Iraq. He can’t give a valid reason for it, and that’s so shocking.Thousands of lives are being lost. We’re killing people who did nothing to us. We raise young people to do the right thing, not to lie and cheat and steal and kill and then we all of a sudden tell them to go kill people who’ve done nothing to them. I stew about this every day.
If there are words I’ve carried with me through my life they belong to a sports writer who came to my high school. After his talk, we went up to him to get his autograph. He said no, he wouldn’t sign any autographs. He said, “Never ask for such a thing.You are as good as anyone else.” When a press secretary avoids a question or isn’t behaving as he should, I remember those words. I remind him that he’s a public servant, that we’re paying him, that he’s not there to do us a favor, he owes us an explanation, an accounting. People should understand: we don’t have a king or a dictator. A president can be impeached if he does something wrong. Being a citizen gives you rights you must never forget you have. Rights that are secured in the Bill of Rights. Let this fact give you strength, don’t let people push you around, and always do the right thing.
CHERYL WARD-KAISER
The Strongest of Victims
There is a very personal reason that Cheryl Ward-Kaiser sits on the California Juvenile Justice Commission, speaks to youth in detention centers, campaigns for political candidates who will forward the rights of victims of crimes, and supports the Justice and Reconciliation project. One night, five young people broke into her bedroom and woke her up not only out of sleep but out of any sense of security she might have had. She witnessed her daughter being raped and her husband’s murder.
Since that time, Cheryl has worked hard to forgive the perpetrators, all of whom were identified and arrested and are serving or have served time in jail.She asked to and did meet the driver of the getaway car and the man who kept his foot on her back that night. She not only believes that victims have the right to question those who have interrupted their lives, but also feels strongly that she has something to offer that may affect or prevent future crimes. If anyone belongs in this book, it is a person who works to stop violence, and I believe that Cheryl does just that.
I no longer live in a fluffy world. I’m a serious person. I might enjoy talking about my wonderful grandchildren, say, or the wonderful man I married years after the crime (the arresting officer on my case). But, I live in the real world now, a world where we must work to reach youngsters, even those who’ve already offended, and prevent more horrible things from happening out there. I was shocked to find out how young the perpetrators were in the attack on my family. Lying there on the floor with a shotgun to my head, I’d guessed that they were in their late twenties, but they were actually only eighteen, nineteen, and twenty. The girl who drove the getaway car was all of sixteen! I found out later that they had committed seventeen other robberies before then.
When they burst into the room, my husband, Jamie, and I didn’t have time to get out of bed. The noise went from zero to 1,000 in a second. One of the men forced me to the ground with his foot on my back. They cursed the whole time as they dragged Jamie on his knees from place to place, searching for the safe they were convinced we had but didn’t. They found an envelope of cash that Jamie was going to use to surprise me the next day by buying a soft water heater I’d wanted for thirteen years! They started counting it out and they couldn’t even count it right. I heard the man’s hand hitting my rosary on the trunk near my bed as he rifled through the money. Then, they pulled my seventeen-year-old daughter, Roxie, into the room, made her strip, and raped her with the barrel of a gun in front of her dad. What I couldn’t see, I could hear.
As strange as it may sound, I never felt afraid, although I was convinced I was going to die. I first prayed to God for forgiveness of my sins and for strength, and then I begged the men not to hurt Roxie. They had such power lust, such a thirst for blood, they were like leeches. As events escalated, the two main criminals got higher and higher on the violence. These men were much bigger than my husband, but he fought so hard that, in the end, they were amazed. I don’t think they’d had dads around and didn’t know that when you threaten to kill a man’s wife and daughter, you may push that man over the edge. They ended up shooting him in the back. After that, the men fled and soon sheriff ’s officers filled the house.
I was never in shock unless you count the shock of discovering the real world, a world of shit, a world in which a criminal taps you on the shoulder and says, “You’re it!” I didn’t shed a tear and neither did Roxie, until, many hours later, I got into the shower. Then I broke down. I’d been so protected by marriage. I’d never graduated college, I hadn’t worked a paying job in twenty-six years (I was volunteering as a youth counselor, working primarily with pregnant girls when the crime occurred), and we didn’t have a lot of savings or a fat insurance policy. I sat on the bed, thinking “I’m now the breadwinner. I’m going to lose this house. I will have to pull Roxie out of private school. I wonder if I can get a job to support myself.” As it turned out, Tanimura and Antle, the produce company my husband worked for, were wonderful. They created a job for me, paid me my husband’s salary, and told me to go out into the community and make someone’s life better to help balance what happened. And that’s what I’ve been trying to do.
The trial lasted twenty-two months. I was excluded from the courtroom most of the time; first because I was a witness, second because the prosecutor was afraid that the offenders’ lawyers might win an appeal by arguing that I was such a s
trong victim that the jury could only convict, and third when I hugged the shooter’s mom. Staying outside was torture. I’d lost my husband, my daughter had been raped, my life was upside down. I wanted to see and hear the five on trial and I wanted them to see and hear me.
Finally I was given a chance. California was the first state to pass Proposition 115, the Crime Victims’ Justice Reform Act. That law gives victims a voice in the proceedings, and that’s a very powerful part of the healing process. I was entitled to address the court at the end in a “victim impact statement,” and I did. I spoke from the heart, without notes. I was able to say what I felt and what I wanted. I laid out the facts of my own childhood abuse (I’d been physically abused by my father and sexually abused by my grandfather) because I didn’t want the men to use their own childhoods as an excuse. I said, “This is what happened to me, but I made a choice not to grow up to hurt other people.You had the same choice.” When it came to sentencing the man who raped my daughter with the shotgun, and who had loved hurting her, I fought against the lighter sentence that was being considered for him. Three times the judge suggested to the lawyers that he would give him twenty-five years to life with the possibility of parole, but I continued to petition for a life sentence without the possibility of parole. They listened, and that’s what he got. I felt that he and the shooter would do it again if they ever had the chance.
After the trial, I learned about restorative justice, the concept of bringing victims and offenders together with the goal of accountability and forgiveness. I found this very exciting. So many people, usually those who’ve not been a victim, talk about verdicts bringing closure. Nothing could be further from the truth. From the moment a crime takes place, it’s the beginning of a whole new life. The key is what you do with what has happened to you. I wanted to meet my violators for several reasons. First, I wanted to tell them that I do not hate them and that I forgive them. I wanted to tell them that face to face. Second, because I had so many questions.Why did they choose my house? for instance. My closet was hidden, no one could see it in the dark, and yet the men who entered my bedroom went straight for it. They knew where it was. How? And why did they think my house had a safe? It seems to me someone must have fed them false information. Who would do such a thing still nags me.Third, because I wanted to be sure that they heard everything that they had taken from me and from Roxie and be forced to think about it. I didn’t feel vindictive; rather, the only way any of us could begin to heal was by being honest about what had occurred.
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