Wednesday, January 9, 2019

The Blame Game


Raising kids to adulthood is no easy task.

I'm not talking about teaching them to read, dress and feed themselves, teaching them to play catch with a ball and glove, how to make their beds, wash their own clothes, tie their shoes. That's the easy stuff.

Teaching them values, morals, character...things that will guide them through life...is much tougher. Right from wrong, honest from dishonest, good from bad. Those are the foundations on which to build and raise a productive citizen who is an asset to those around them. A leader among leaders.

Most of all, we want them to make decisions that will have positive impacts while also learning the value of personal responsibility.

Ah, but there are obstacles along the way, pot holes in the road of life. Single-parent households, less-than-desirable friends, peer pressure...they can all work in concert to hinder the process. Some roadblocks are beyond what we, as parents, can control and can have a profound effect on our young adults.

When that occurs, in whatever form, we must choose how we, as parents, react. We pray the issues aren't insurmountable.         

Or fatal.

On the sixth of December, 2018, 19-year-old Andrew Herrera walked into a San Antonio Popeye's chicken shack wearing a mask, hoodie and brandishing a gun, intent on robbing the restaurant and patrons.

Herrera confronted a man who was dining with his family, demanding his money and pointing the firearm at the man's children. When told by the man that he'd spent his cash on food for his kids, Herrera then turned his weapon on a Popeye's employee, looking away from his initial target.

The seated patron, who has a concealed-carry permit, used the distraction to draw his own handgun and fire on Herrera, striking the masked gunman five times. Herrera died at a local hospital.

While the incident is still under investigation, a police spokesman stated there would be no charges filed against the patron protecting his family.

That brings us to the deceased gunman's mother, Cynthia Ruiz. She hasn't had an easy life; her husband died, leaving her to raise Herrera alone.

While not excusing her son's decision to attempt an armed robbery, she wonders why the man who shot Herrera didn't stop after the first round.

"Why shoot him four more times? Why did he shoot him 5 times?"

Then she added that her son, diagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic, suffered from mental health issues and that he'd recently stopped taking his medication....in effect, blaming her son's actions on his refusal to medicate and his death on an overzealous gun owner.

Police investigators stated that Herrera was a suspect in several other armed robberies.

The blame game has become endemic in today's society, finding a way to shift guilt onto anything or anyone other than yourself. I don't blame Mrs. Ruiz for what her son did, nor do I blame the unnamed father for protecting the lives of his family and the employees inside that Popeye's on December 6th.
Herrera didn't take into account what effect his refusal of medication would have or the possibility that he would not be the only armed person inside the restaurant.

He should have. The minute he pulled on the mask and drew a handgun, young Andrew Herrera crafted his own destiny. It was his decision, and it was a tragically bad one.

No one else is to blame.







Sunday, January 6, 2019

Offended? Get Over Your Fragile Feelings and Grow Up


I write a weekly column for the local newspaper about our military veterans who've served in conflicts and wars from times gone by: World War II, Korea and Vietnam. I put a premium on the opportunities to interview the WW II and Korea folks, especially, because there are so many fewer of them.

There's a Facebook page I run, entitled, 'A Veteran's Story'; all of the veterans that have been profiled to date are on that page. Every week, when a new story is posted, I'll make that week's soldier the profile picture for the page and, if there's a suitable one available, it'll be posted as that week's page background photo.

It's just one more way of honoring these patriots.

Last week's story was about Morrie Sheffer, who served in the Army's 8th Air Corps in Europe during WW II. As part of his duties in the bomb wing's public affairs office, Morrie wrote stories for the outfit's newspaper...an assignment that afforded the young soldier the opportunity to travel all over Europe and write on a variety of topics, including the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials.

He also wrote a story after being sent to tour Dachau Prison Camp, the Third Reich's very first genocidal extermination facility, shortly after the war. 31,951 souls were executed there.

To put that into perspective, imagine a just-shy-of-capacity crowd at the Cleveland Indians' Progressive Field being killed with Zyklon-B gas by the Nazis, victims who were told they were being given showers.

Mr. Sheffer didn't have very many photos from his time in WW II; since he'd covered the Dachau camp, I chose a photo from the internet to use as the weekly page background, a photo from Dachau.

A photo from the Dachau crematory ovens, one showing three prisoners standing beside a deceased victim about to be burned to ashes.

One of the page readers was offended by the photograph, sending me an email to tell me how terribly offended she was and how ashamed I should be for using that picture. She certainly got her moneys' worth. I didn't reply to her communication but, knowing she also follows this page, I will now.

Get over it.

Get over your offended self. What happened at Dachau, and all the other Nazi death camps, is history, very well-documented history. It is a terrible, horrific history, but it is history nonetheless, whether you see those pictures or not.

Conditions were so terrible that, after visiting the Ohrdruf sub-camp at Buchenwald, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight Eisenhower ordered that members of Congress and prominent newspaper editors be flown to Europe in order to witness the atrocities committed at these death camps. He wanted it on record, in print, in photographs, in newsreels, so that there could be no denial of what had been done to these human beings by the Third Reich.

I will not bend or distort history, no matter how distasteful it may be to some. Your feelings may be fragile but history...and truth...doesn't care.

Neither do I.