10 years ago today, on May 2, 2001, our community was stunned by news that John Battaglia had shot and killed his daughters, Faith (9) and Liberty (6). Former Bradfield Elementary classmates will no doubt remember their sweet friends and wonder what the girls would be like today at ages 16 and 19. I’ll be thinking about their mother, Mary Jean Pearle.
This dark and rainy day seems the perfect backdrop to announce that Pamela Martin Duarte, the smack talkin’, middle finger usin’, parasol wielding cast member of Dallas Divas and Daughters, has a book coming out this month. The kind with words and a plot, I think. It just goes to show, anything can happen.
As parents we teach our children to “do unto others” and all that. So how do we explain, no matter how justified, why Americans are seen on every channel cheering in the streets over news that Osama bin Laden has been killed? My 7 year old son understands that bin Laden is a really bad man, responsible for 9/11 and more but said, “They shouldn’t kill people or cheer because he died.” And I’m speechless.
after i dried my eyes from the first part of your rise and shine -i have to also agree with you on the last part- my 14 year old son and i had the same conversation about the cheering via facebook over the death of Bin Laden.
Interesting perspective by your son, and understand why it would difficult for a 7 year old to reconcile. Were my children to pose the same question, I would say that people weren’t cheering because someone was killed, but rather, that what he represented, pure evil, was extinguished. Unfortunately, sometimes that means having to do things that don’t seem very Christian. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
My household had the same conversation, that Obama’s announcement had the right tone but the cheering crowds did not. They reminded us of the street celebrations around the world shown after 9-11, of people cheering that the US had been attacked. Eliminating OBL was right, but sadly right.
I would prefer more sober crowds gathering in NYC and DC, but the people’s emotions were genuine. I don’t fault them.
Where is Battaglia now? Life without parole or death row?
Three HPISD children were murdered by their fathers that year. About a month after 9-11, on October 5, an Armstrong second grader was shot and killed. His mother was also killed, his brother was injured, and then his father killed himself.
Evan Loss would be a senior next year. Bonnie Loss Murphy was a beautiful person inside and out. Her family, including Evan’s stepdad, were exemplary in understanding the gunman to be mentally ill, forgiving him, and consoling his family.
Do you think British Intelligence decided Kate & Wills should postpone their honeymoon Saturday out of fear that Al Qaeda might retaliate against them?
Or even that the exact day for the US to go for Bin Laden was chosen to allow the Royal Wedding to finish without adding additional security burdens to it?
My 18 year old son said the exact same thing when they showed the cheering crowds outside the White House. He said, “we’re behaving no better than they do.” He doesn’t disagree that it needed to happen and that he is very glad that it did, but thinks the behavior of cheering about it, waving signs and banners is quite wrong. He told me the Facebook behavior was bad as well.
You are quite the conspiracy theorist, @DemBones, I’d like to think that Obama didn’t give Kate & Wills a single thought when he had the opportunity to extinguish Bin Laden.
DemBones: I really hope our gov’t could care less about figurehead royals and their pompous and ostentatious displays amongst their minions.
Merritt: My kids asked the same question. Tough answer.
It’s real easy for me to armchair quarterback and say no one should cheer, but I didn’t lose someone on 9/11 or in any other bin laden-backed terror atrocity. Of course, looking at some of the people cheering on tv, I’m hard pressed to believe they did either.
Geez, and I thought answering Easter Bunny questions was hard last week.
Years ago, I’d be cheering too. But, not any more.
Violence is a cycle. It has to stop somewhere. I don’t deny the crimes of the evil and I’d like these people taken out of society. But, I am against killing. I am against the death penalty. For cycles of violence to stop, the cycle must stop.
It took my years to realize why God said, Thou Shalt Not Kill. Humans don’t have a right to kill anyone else. It is wrong. Killing just continues the cycle of violence.
Teaching that murder is wrong by killing continues the killing.
I agree that some of the more raucous cheering last night outside Ground Zero & the White House had an unfortunate tone of “partying” to it. That being said, I also am very satisfied that justice was served to OBL; upclose, personal and meted out to him by the hands of American soldiers, rather than some drone, dropping a bomb from with no warning. Hearing that one of the people killed was a woman being used as a human shield, presumably by OBL, his son or one of his guards reiterated very clearly the utter disregard for human life these terrorists had. I worked for American Airlines for 20 years and listening to the taped phone calls made by the flight attendants to the company as their hijacked planes were heading for disaster was one of the most chilling things I have ever experienced. There is no closure here for anyone whose loved ones died on 9/11, but as an observer to the events of the day, I do feel both relief and a sense of completion to a defining moment in history.
I noticed that the majority of the folks out on the streets appeared to be college kids. There was even a photo on MSNBC from my favorite bar in Austin, right by the campus. These kids were just looking for a reason to party on a Sunday night (they were, what, 8-12 years old on 9/11/01?).
I understand the significance and don’t want to make light of these events (and I also understand the cowboyishness of the American people). But I’m not sure I understand how this will permanently cripple the entire organization. Am I relieved? Yes. Jubilant? Hardly.
I was appalled at the headline. ” Justice was done”. My justice involves a court system and jury trial, not assassination ala jack Bauer. War crimes are no different.
I disagree that our behavior “was no better than theirs”. On 9/11, I saw footage of “them” cheering in the streets because thousands of totally innocent people had been mass murdered without warning. This morning, I saw footage of Americans cheering that the mastermind and financial funder of these and many other attempts at the same, one man, had been eliminated.
If there is a poisonous snake in my house killing my children, and Animal Control is unable to locate and catch it, and the only way to stop it is to kill it when there is a rare chance, I think I’d be celebrating that I’m safe again once it was dead. I think most people would.
If we’re going to get pissy and moralistic about a couple of small, rowdy street parties cheering bin Laden’s death, I suppose we’ll just have to commit suicide out of despair and horror when remembering Times Square on V-E Day and V-J Day.
Or, you can look at it this way: On Sunday night, and in 1945, we were celebrating a victory. This weekend it was a small celebration for a small but important victory. In 1945 it was a huge celebration for a pair of huge victories. I doubt the millions of people in Times Square in 1945 were celebrating specifically because we had just blasted Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, Nuremberg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants off the face of the planet (which we did, and with gusto). They were celebrating because we won. Killing Osama didn’t win a war, but it was still a win.
Martin Henegan = Pamela Duarte? Either she has a ghostwriter or your link isn’t correct.
after i dried my eyes from the first part of your rise and shine -i have to also agree with you on the last part- my 14 year old son and i had the same conversation about the cheering via facebook over the death of Bin Laden.
@A.B.- I’m told she has a co-writer. Probably for the big words.
Interesting perspective by your son, and understand why it would difficult for a 7 year old to reconcile. Were my children to pose the same question, I would say that people weren’t cheering because someone was killed, but rather, that what he represented, pure evil, was extinguished. Unfortunately, sometimes that means having to do things that don’t seem very Christian. But we don’t live in a perfect world.
My household had the same conversation, that Obama’s announcement had the right tone but the cheering crowds did not. They reminded us of the street celebrations around the world shown after 9-11, of people cheering that the US had been attacked. Eliminating OBL was right, but sadly right.
I would prefer more sober crowds gathering in NYC and DC, but the people’s emotions were genuine. I don’t fault them.
Where is Battaglia now? Life without parole or death row?
Three HPISD children were murdered by their fathers that year. About a month after 9-11, on October 5, an Armstrong second grader was shot and killed. His mother was also killed, his brother was injured, and then his father killed himself.
Evan Loss would be a senior next year. Bonnie Loss Murphy was a beautiful person inside and out. Her family, including Evan’s stepdad, were exemplary in understanding the gunman to be mentally ill, forgiving him, and consoling his family.
2001 was a scary year.
Do you think British Intelligence decided Kate & Wills should postpone their honeymoon Saturday out of fear that Al Qaeda might retaliate against them?
Or even that the exact day for the US to go for Bin Laden was chosen to allow the Royal Wedding to finish without adding additional security burdens to it?
People are not cheering the stopping of a heartbeat. They are cheering the end of a murderous, tyrannical reign of terror by a psychopath.
My 18 year old son said the exact same thing when they showed the cheering crowds outside the White House. He said, “we’re behaving no better than they do.” He doesn’t disagree that it needed to happen and that he is very glad that it did, but thinks the behavior of cheering about it, waving signs and banners is quite wrong. He told me the Facebook behavior was bad as well.
You are quite the conspiracy theorist, @DemBones, I’d like to think that Obama didn’t give Kate & Wills a single thought when he had the opportunity to extinguish Bin Laden.
DemBones: I really hope our gov’t could care less about figurehead royals and their pompous and ostentatious displays amongst their minions.
Merritt: My kids asked the same question. Tough answer.
It’s real easy for me to armchair quarterback and say no one should cheer, but I didn’t lose someone on 9/11 or in any other bin laden-backed terror atrocity. Of course, looking at some of the people cheering on tv, I’m hard pressed to believe they did either.
Geez, and I thought answering Easter Bunny questions was hard last week.
Years ago, I’d be cheering too. But, not any more.
Violence is a cycle. It has to stop somewhere. I don’t deny the crimes of the evil and I’d like these people taken out of society. But, I am against killing. I am against the death penalty. For cycles of violence to stop, the cycle must stop.
It took my years to realize why God said, Thou Shalt Not Kill. Humans don’t have a right to kill anyone else. It is wrong. Killing just continues the cycle of violence.
Teaching that murder is wrong by killing continues the killing.
I agree that some of the more raucous cheering last night outside Ground Zero & the White House had an unfortunate tone of “partying” to it. That being said, I also am very satisfied that justice was served to OBL; upclose, personal and meted out to him by the hands of American soldiers, rather than some drone, dropping a bomb from with no warning. Hearing that one of the people killed was a woman being used as a human shield, presumably by OBL, his son or one of his guards reiterated very clearly the utter disregard for human life these terrorists had. I worked for American Airlines for 20 years and listening to the taped phone calls made by the flight attendants to the company as their hijacked planes were heading for disaster was one of the most chilling things I have ever experienced. There is no closure here for anyone whose loved ones died on 9/11, but as an observer to the events of the day, I do feel both relief and a sense of completion to a defining moment in history.
Grump – I think you meant to say “couldn’t care less”. Saying you hope they “could care less” means you hope they care at least a little bit.
Sorry for the hyper-technical diversion, but this has been a pet peeve of mine for years.
If Al Qaeda had retaliated around the Royal Wedding, they could have killed thousands of people at once. That’s all.
I will eventually feel safer because OBL is dead, but for the immediate future I expect retaliation and feel the world is a little less safe.
1Zima2Many: Thank you for being the grammar police on a blog. I think what I meant to say was “get a life”.
I think the kiddo has it right, Merritt.
I noticed that the majority of the folks out on the streets appeared to be college kids. There was even a photo on MSNBC from my favorite bar in Austin, right by the campus. These kids were just looking for a reason to party on a Sunday night (they were, what, 8-12 years old on 9/11/01?).
I understand the significance and don’t want to make light of these events (and I also understand the cowboyishness of the American people). But I’m not sure I understand how this will permanently cripple the entire organization. Am I relieved? Yes. Jubilant? Hardly.
I was appalled at the headline. ” Justice was done”. My justice involves a court system and jury trial, not assassination ala jack Bauer. War crimes are no different.
I disagree that our behavior “was no better than theirs”. On 9/11, I saw footage of “them” cheering in the streets because thousands of totally innocent people had been mass murdered without warning. This morning, I saw footage of Americans cheering that the mastermind and financial funder of these and many other attempts at the same, one man, had been eliminated.
If there is a poisonous snake in my house killing my children, and Animal Control is unable to locate and catch it, and the only way to stop it is to kill it when there is a rare chance, I think I’d be celebrating that I’m safe again once it was dead. I think most people would.
If we’re going to get pissy and moralistic about a couple of small, rowdy street parties cheering bin Laden’s death, I suppose we’ll just have to commit suicide out of despair and horror when remembering Times Square on V-E Day and V-J Day.
Or, you can look at it this way: On Sunday night, and in 1945, we were celebrating a victory. This weekend it was a small celebration for a small but important victory. In 1945 it was a huge celebration for a pair of huge victories. I doubt the millions of people in Times Square in 1945 were celebrating specifically because we had just blasted Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Dresden, Nuremberg, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki and many hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants off the face of the planet (which we did, and with gusto). They were celebrating because we won. Killing Osama didn’t win a war, but it was still a win.
@UPDad,
Well put.