To Obama

by Jeanne Marie Laskas

  She wondered why they didn’t do Moral Mondays marches in Boone. (She didn’t want to have to keep driving over to Raleigh.) So she got some people together. “Convene a conversation on race.” Part of the reason they didn’t have Moral Mondays in Boone, she found out, was there was no officially chartered local NAACP chapter in Boone—or anywhere in all of Watauga County, for that matter.

  That’s when Marg started collecting signatures. “We need a chapter.”

  On February 15, 2014, three years after her encounter with the kid in Albany, seven months after she’d heard Obama’s impromptu speech about Trayvon Martin, the Watauga NAACP branch was officially chartered.

  They held meetings. They invited speakers from Appalachian State University. They started seminars, an Unlearning Racism discussion group, a three-part UNpacking (our own) HATE series. They started the Coffee with a Cop series down at the Hospitality House. Hey, cops, they said, come on out and talk to the community that’s so scared of you.

  Somebody in one of the meetings got the idea about kickball. It’s a few years going, the Community Unity Picnic, and of all the things that Marg, now seventy-five, and the newly established Watauga NAACP branch do, that’s probably her favorite. They added a dunking pool. Everybody getting dunked—it’s so hilarious. Black people, white people, Hispanic people, cops, kids, old people. Everybody likes kickball and getting dunked.

  Marg circulates and makes sure people aren’t sitting by themselves and also that everyone knows where the food is.

  CHAPTER 11

  Red Dot

  “So I walked over to him, um, barefoot, stepping over all the glass and everything that he had shot. And he was still yelling, and he was still holding the shotgun, and I went to him, and—he was larger than me. My dad was a large man. And immensely strong—I never appreciated how strong he was until that day. But he just started crying and yelling that no one appreciated him and that everybody had forgotten him. And that everybody just shits on him. And that nobody cared. And so I put my arms around him to try to console him, and I guess he took that as a sign of aggression. And he started shooting, and I was trying to restrain him while he was shooting, and he just kept shooting and kept shooting, and at that point—I don’t remember screaming. The only reason I know I was screaming is because my brother told me I was. I saw my brother run out of the house. I kind of emotionally shut down. My dad started crying, like sobbing uncontrollably. And I’d never seen my dad cry. As a marine, he put on this façade that he was so strong and that nothing could harm him. I’d never seen him cry. And so his phone was in his pocket, and it started ringing. I took it from him and answered it. It was our neighbor. He said the police were coming. I didn’t want my dad to hear because I knew it would just make him even more angry. So I hung up the phone, and I guided my dad to his room, and on his bed I saw he had laid out every single weapon that he had owned and all the ammunition that he had for those weapons. And I knew what he had planned to do. It was Christmas Eve.

  “I was trying to console him and talking very soothingly and reassuring him everything would be okay and nobody was upset with him. I guided him to the front steps, and I got him on the porch. I was trying to push him to go down the steps into the front yard. And it was raining. I saw all of these people surrounding our house. I finally got him into the front yard. And my dad always kept a knife on him, which a lot of marines do. And so they saw the knife, and they told him to drop it. And, um, he wouldn’t. So I tried to get it. And he dropped it, and then he tried to lunge for it. So then I tried to push it away, and we were both on the ground at this point when it was raining. And it was muddy. And it was cold. And I’m here, like, with the last amount of strength that I have physically trying to hold him to the ground, yelling for everyone to help me.

  “I don’t know how many people came to pick him up.

  “At the hospital I cried in the hallway on a stretcher until I could no longer cry.

  “On Christmas Day my mom, my brother, and I were cleaning up the glass and all the remnants of, um, the fish tank and everything that he had shot up. He shot the flag that was awarded to him when he retired and all of his medals and everything—all the memorabilia associated with the Marine Corps. We cleaned up as much as we could, and then I went upstairs, and I wrote the letter. That’s when I wrote the letter. The VA doctors had failed him; his so-called friends had failed him; the Marine Corps had failed him. I didn’t know where else to turn. And so I thought, If the last person that I can think of is the president, and if that’s my last resource, then I’m going to give it every single ounce of energy that I have.”

  * * *

  —

  At the White House, Ashley DeLeon’s 2014 letter about the events that occurred at home with her father on Christmas Eve ended up in a pile just like all the others in the OPC hard-mail room. On a cold January afternoon, a staffer named Garrett picked it up. He read through it quickly, as he had done with the letter before it and the letter before that. A few paragraphs in, he slowed down. He rolled his chair back, started from the beginning again, and got to the end. “I need to take a break,” he said to an intern nearby.

  He took the letter with him on a walk and ended up at the desk of Lacey Higley, whose office was just across the hall from the hard-mail room. “I’ve been wandering around the hallway,” he said.

  “Are you okay?” Lacey said.

  Lacey was by then used to identifying the various looks people had when they came to her desk. She was the person in charge of Red Dots. A Red Dot was an emergency. Suicide, self-harm, eating disorders, rape, domestic violence, addiction—the flow, as many as four hundred in one day, varied. The rule was that every Red Dot had to be processed within twenty-four hours, assigned to an agency or organization like the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. This rule made more sense with email than it did with hard mail; weeks had already gone by since Christmas, the day Ashley put her letter in the mail.

  “We have to figure out what to do,” Garrett said, handing Ashley’s letter to Lacey.

  Lacey began reading Ashley’s letter, then slowed down. She started from the beginning again and got to the end. She said she needed a walk, and so she did a lap around the first floor of the EEOB, and Garrett joined her, the two of them talking about what they had read.

  December 25, 2014

  Dear Mr. President,

  My father was a United States Marine for 22 years before retiring as a MSgt. As part of the infantry, he deployed on six occasions. Each deployment my father came back less and less like himself. He missed many moments of my life: birthdays, holidays, award ceremonies. He used to love to hunt, to fish, to spend time with my mother, little brother and I. But after he retired, my father was forgotten. You see, when my dad retired he no longer had the brotherhood of fellow marines; no one thanked him for his service; no one called to check on his well being. He was diagnosed with severe PTSD and was medically disabled.

  So he drank. And drank. My father’s alcoholism stole the man that I had known for 21 years of my life. He could easily spend $100 a night on alcohol. He would drink all night, come back at 6 am, sleep all day, and repeat the cycle.

  I am a Junior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. My father never called me to ask how I was, how my classes were, or if I had a good day at work. Every day I would look in the mirror and see the remnants of him in my facial features. But the man that I resembled so much, the man who constituted half of me, wasn’t one that I knew any longer.

  Christmas Eve was a rainy day in Jacksonville, NC Mr. President. I was taking a shower upstairs when I heard the first two shots. I knew it was him. As I jumped out of the shower and ran down the stairs in nothing but a towel I could see my father pacing in the living room with a shotgun in his hand and tears in his eyes. He yelled at me, his little girl, “Get the f**
* out of my house! GET OUT!” And in that moment I knew I had two choices: to run and leave my little brother upstairs + my dad with a loaded weapon. Or to stay. I chose the latter. You see, I chose to stay in that room and fight over that gun because I knew that my dad was still in there somewhere. He had to be. As I struggled with my father, he shot. And shot. The small girl who grew up waving the American flag at her daddy’s homecomings yelled “NOOOO” from the bottom of her gut. Glass shattered. The dogs barked. And in my peripheral vision I saw my brother run out of the house.

  I didn’t care if I died Mr. President. I’m 21 years old and I would sacrifice myself without a second thought to save the man who raised me from taking his own life. Because when his country turned their back on him, I was still there. The light has long been gone from his eyes, but he is still my father. I am still his little girl. A little piece of me died that day. I will never be the same. This time of year is one to celebrate with family and to be thankful for the blessings provided to us. Instead I spent Christmas Day sweeping up glass and looking at my home riddled with bullet holes. Like a war zone.

  I’m writing to ask for your help. Not for my family Mr. President. My family died that night. I’m asking you to help the others. The little girls and boys who have yet to see their mother’s and father’s souls die away. They need help. Get them help. Don’t forget about them. They need you. Just like Sasha and Malia need you. They do.

  With hope,

  Ashley DeLeon

  * * *

  —

  One thing everyone in OPC learned quickly was that they needed one another. They needed to talk this stuff out. The content of the letters, the constant pleas, the emotions jumping and bouncing off the page. It was impossible to explain to people outside of OPC what it was like to sit all day in the intensity of the material, and that’s why so many OPC staffers lived with one another, roommates commuting together, eating dinner together, watching Netflix together. Lacey lived with Vinnie and Steve, then Mitchell, then Heidi. In the office she shared a wall with Yena, and throughout the day they would knock on it, give the signal: Come over here and read this one, please. I can’t deal.

  Lacey was taller than most of her friends, lanky and unadorned; she moved with a stiffness that suggested her height was a burden. She was just twenty-three, and if you asked her to describe herself, she would say she was timid. Perhaps the last person you’d imagine being able to handle a portfolio as emotionally challenging as Red Dots. She had started at OPC as an intern while still in college. Walking to the EEOB that first day, she had felt like a bird falling too soon out of the nest. She got lost, called her dad in tears. “Help me.” She believed she was too anxious to make it in the real world, her voice too thin, her throat too tight, air not moving. She would never make it in the real world. She thought there was something wrong with her, and surely one of the people at the White House would discover she had no business being among them. She had no background in government; she would not be able to participate in conversations about policy or policy making; unlike the others she had not worked on Obama’s campaign—or anyone’s campaign. She was a nobody who would never belong.

  “One voice can change a room.” If she had a favorite speech of Obama’s, it was that one, an old one, inspired by a woman with a gold tooth. The woman with the gold tooth was in Greenwood, South Carolina, at a rally for Obama in 2007. The rally was a bust, no one there but a small gathering of local folks needing something to do. Obama was looking out at the emptiness. “Fired up, ready to go!” the woman with the gold tooth abruptly shouted. And as if on cue, the people around her repeated her words, began to chant, and in an instant the rally went from dismal to glorious.

  “It shows you what one voice can do. That one voice can change a room,” Obama said at a campaign rally over a year later, recounting the story. “And if a voice can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.”

  If you asked Lacey about her evolution from scared intern to the warrior who could handle hundreds of Red Dots every day, she would say it had to do with Obama and those words. One voice. One letter. One intern. Everybody matters.

  “You will cry,” she would tell each class of new interns that came under her charge, now that she was the person manning the Red Dot desk. “It’s normal. You will see me cry at least twice while you’re here. This work is intense. This work is hard. If you need to go home, you can go home.”

  * * *

  —

  When she finished her walk with Garrett that day, Lacey ran Ashley’s letter through the scanner and forwarded the scan to the VA’s crisis unit. She wondered about the idea of sampling the letter; what would happen if the president had a chance to read Ashley’s story? It was not something people did. Red Dots were special cases that required emergency assistance, and taking the time to run them by the president could only bog down the effort, so they were never sampled. That bothered Lacey. She had herself recently begun treatment for depression and anxiety, and she knew all too well the damaging effects of the stigma surrounding mental health issues. Perhaps she was in a unique position to help raise the voices of people who were so often suffering in silence.

  She saw Fiona in the hall. “The president needs to see this,” Lacey said, handing Fiona Ashley’s letter. “He needs to see this.”

  Everyone in OPC had one letter that defined his or her work, and for Lacey it would be Ashley’s. She made a photocopy of it and taped it to the wall above her desk. She took a pink highlighter and marked the last paragraph.

  I’m writing to ask for your help. Not for my family, Mr. President. My family died that night. I’m asking you to help the others. The little girls and boys who have yet to see their mother’s and father’s souls die away. They need help. Get them help. Don’t forget about them. They need you. Just like Sasha and Malia need you. They do.

  “I hold on to it as my guidepost for what I’m doing and why I’m here,” she would later say.

  That afternoon, Fiona included Ashley’s letter in the stack of 10LADs that went to the president.

  The letter didn’t come back in the next batch marked, “Back from the OVAL.” It didn’t come back in the batch after that either. Some letters the president sat on.

  It would be more than a week before Obama had a response ready for Ashley.

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  WASHINGTON

  Ashley—

  I was so moved by your letter. As a father, I can only imagine how heartbreaking the situation must be, and I’m inspired by the strength and perspective you possess at such a young age.

  I am asking the VA to reach out to your family to provide any support that you need. And please know that beneath the pain, your father still loves his daughter, and is surely proud of her.

  Sincerely,

  Barack Obama

  * * *

  —

  “I received a manila envelope from the White House. And inside was a note—it was a small note, and it was handwritten by the president. I was completely taken aback. I didn’t expect anyone to read it, much less respond to it. And it basically said to stay strong.

  “They called me, and they put me in contact with the VA, and they were trying to get my dad resources that could help with his addictions and with his depression. But by that time I wasn’t in contact with my father because I didn’t feel safe around him to be honest. He went to FOCUS, a marine rehabilitation program, I believe.

  “My mom tried so hard to try to get us to be closer again. That’s my biggest regret—that I believed so much in the future, that I would have time to heal.”

  * * *

  —

  The conversation about Ashley and her dad didn’t end with the president’s response, or with t
he assistance from the VA to get him into a rehab program, or, for that matter, with Lacey’s decision to hang the letter over her desk. Every letter that came into OPC was in essence a potential conversation starter that could zig and zag and meander throughout the White House and Congress and to people watching on TV.

  When people in the West Wing talked about “the letter underground,” this is part of what they meant. This whole thing was just supposed to be about the president getting ten letters a day, but it grew into something else; letters informed policy proposals and speeches, and they affected people personally.

  Just seven weeks after Ashley sent her letter, on February 12, 2015, in the East Room, Obama signed the Clay Hunt SAV Act into law. “And SAV stands for Suicide Prevention for American Veterans,” he said in his remarks, and it didn’t take long to figure out whom he was talking about in the speech.

  I think of the college student who recently wrote me a letter on Christmas Day. This is as tough a letter as I’ve received since I’ve been president. She talked about her father, who’s a retired marine, and told me about how her dad used to love to hunt and fish and spend time with her and her little brother. But gripped with post-traumatic stress, he became less and less like himself and withdrew from the family. And yet, despite these struggles, she wrote, “I knew that my dad was still in there somewhere….He is still my father. And I am still his little girl.” And she was writing, she said, to ask for help—help her father find his way back—“not for my family, Mr. President,” she said. “I’m asking you to help the others”—other families like hers. And she said, “Don’t forget about them.”