PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, FEBRUARY 20, 2015
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Love transcends societal rules
By ERIC A. HOWALD
Joanie spent most of the day I
met her on the couch where I had
just started work as a vocational care
provider for developmentally disabled
adults.
Joanie was in her 60s, her face
pruned by time and caving in around
her eyes and gums. She was mostly
non-verbal, and needed assistance
walking. I don’t know if an enunci-
ated word ever passed through her
lips. She made keening noises when
she wanted attention. Without warn-
ing, she would begin to cry.
For the previous three years, my
job was providing independent liv-
ing care for the same adult population
in Eugene, but anyone who has done
so will tell you the burn-out rate is
staggering. Whatever barriers you are
told to put in place crumble under
the weight of simple human interac-
tions, like trying to explain to a client
why they pay rent for six months and,
one day, the light bulb ignites with a
brilliance that’s humbling. You get at-
tached. When I left the house I helped
supervise after two years, I sat in the
driveway and bawled for 15 minutes.
Upon my arrival in Portland – my
wife’s employer transferred her to the
Rose City – I was determined not to
go back to in-home care. But, I was
open to vocational work. I would
only have clients for eight hours a day
and send them back to their in-home
care. As my co-workers gave me some
background on the various clients I
would see throughout the day, Joanie
was the one that concerned me most.
I was told that when she likes a per-
son, she would take their hand and try
to “bite” them. It was actually more of
a gumming.
From that day forth, I made it a
point to spend a certain portion of
my day sitting next to Joanie, talking
about the weather, life, and whatever I
thought might be on her mind. Even-
tually, we began taking drives around
the metro area just to get us out of
the warehouse that was our work site.
On one of those drives, she reached
across the console of my Pathfi nder
and took my hand in hers.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve
been drawn to the developmentally
disabled population. It was never mo-
tivated by pity. It might have been a
desire to understand the world bet-
ter and show them that there were
people who valued them. It might
have been my cousin who struggled
with more mild versions of the clients
I was caring for. It might have been
my own diagnosis with epilepsy and
knowing that, not so long ago, people
with my condition were thrown into
hospitals or closets while their fami-
lies did their best to forget them.
However, when I think back on
those days, I realize now that the
infl uence looming largest was that
of my adoptive grandparents Peggy
and Bill Berry. They adopted a baby
girl in 1962.
Six months
later, they dis-
covered she
would likely
suffer
from
moderate de-
velopmental
disabilities for
the rest of her life. They were given
the option of giving her back to the
adoption agency and members of
their family pressured them to do so.
It was too much to ask, it would be
too hard. Peggy and Bill never gave in
to the “rules” imposed by social mo-
res of the time. In later years, Peggy
would say she dreamt of a child before
going to the adoption agency. At the
agency, the baby placed in her arms
was identical to the one in her dream.
Katrina was meant for her.
After my biological grandmother’s
death, Peggy asked me if she and Bill
could be my grandparents, too. Hearts
fi nd a way to fi ll their holes.
I met Katrina long before my
“adoption.” She was a buoyant spit-
fi re who could overwhelm you with
questions that she wouldn’t give you
time to answer before moving on to
the next one. The answers, I don’t
believe, mattered. What mattered was
that you listened. The one time Peggy
and Bill tried to place her in group
home, Peggy only made it around the
block before returning and taking her
back home. Katrina lived with her
parents her entire life. Her mind was
perpetually stuck in the questioning
world somewhere between 5 and 10
years old, but she knew what it meant
to love and more what it meant to be
loved unconditionally.
After a long period of deteriorat-
ing health, we lost Peggy last year.
Last week, Katrina passed in the chair
her mother had occupied. It wasn’t a
place she’d occupied frequently since
Peggy’s death. Grandpa Bill is now my
last living grandparent, and loved all
the more for it.
But, for Bill, and Peggy, too, what
I feel for them goes beyond love. The
only word I have for it is respect.
Respect for standing by a daughter
whose struggles were insurmountable.
Respect for the strength they showed
in ways small and large for 53 years.
Respect for withstanding the slow
burn of of life and fi nding joy even in
its challenges.
All of my family members in de-
velopmentally disabled care – I refuse
to call them “clients” from this mo-
ment forward – taught me about the
Peggy and Bill’s bottomless well of
resilience and how we learn to love
despite the obstacles in our paths.
When Joanie brought my hand up
to her mouth that day, I let her “bite”
me. When anyone offers us uncondi-
tional love, we are fools to reject it.
Rules be damned.
moments
of
lucidity
(Eric A. Howald is Associate
Editor of the Keizertimes.)
The subversive FBI director
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
In the days of the civil rights
movement, FBI Director J. Edgar
Hoover was focused not on the quest
for justice but on his fear of Com-
munists.
In Parting the Waters, the fi rst vol-
ume of his magisterial biography
of Martin Luther King Jr., Taylor
Branch tells of a 1956 Eisenhower
administration meeting during which
Hoover “expressed no sympathy for
civil rights and painted an alarming
picture of subversive elements among
the integrationists.”
As an example, Hoover informed
the Cabinet that Chicago Mayor
Richard Daley—the patriarch who
became a bane of the left—had come
close to publicly criticizing President
Eisenhower for not taking stronger
action after the lynching of 14-year-
old Emmett Till in Mississippi.
“I hasten to say that Mayor Daley
is not a Communist,” Hoover said,
“but pressures engineered by the
Communists were brought to bear
upon him.”
The absurdity that he felt it neces-
sary to recite the words “Mayor Daley
is not a Communist” tells us what we
need to know about Hoover’s frame
of mind.
Last Thursday’s speech by FBI Di-
rector James Comey at Georgetown
University was remarkable on its own
terms, but revolutionary in the con-
text of his agency’s history. You won-
der if Hoover would have accused
Comey of subversive intent.
“All of us in law enforcement
must be honest enough to acknowl-
edge that much of our history is not
pretty,” Comey said. “At many points
in American history, law enforcement
enforced the status quo, a status quo
that was often brutally unfair to dis-
favored groups.”
He explained
why he keeps
on his desk a
copy of Attor-
ney
General
Robert Ken-
nedy’s approval
of Hoover’s request to wiretap Dr.
King: “The entire application is fi ve
sentences long, it is without fact or
substance, and is predicated on the
naked assertion that there is ‘Com-
munist infl uence in the racial situ-
ation.’” He calls agents’ attention to
the document, he said, “to ensure that
we remember our mistakes and that
we learn from them.”
And who would think an FBI di-
rector would cite “Everyone’s a Little
Bit Racist,” a song from the Broad-
way hit Avenue Q? His point: “Many
people in our white-majority culture
have unconscious racial biases and re-
act differently to a white face than a
black face.”
Yet Comey was unabashedly pro-
cop. He fondly recalled his grandfa-
ther, William J. Comey, who rose to
head the Yonkers, New York, police
department. “Law enforcement is
not the root cause of problems in
our hardest-hit neighborhoods,” the
FBI director said. “Police offi cers
—people of enormous courage and
integrity, in the main—are in those
neighborhoods, risking their lives, to
protect folks from offenders who are
the product of problems that will not
be solved by body cameras.”
Comey wasn’t just giving a let’s-
respect-each-other speech. He ar-
gued that the problems of race, racism
and injustice go deeper than policing.
His two most concrete suggestions
were a call for “more and better data
related to those we arrest, those we
other
views
confront for breaking the law and
jeopardizing public safety, and those
who confront us,” and support for
President Obama’s “My Brother’s
Keeper” initiative.
He urged attention to the “the
disproportionate challenges faced by
young men of color,” noting that “the
percentage of young men not work-
ing or not enrolled in school is nearly
twice as high for blacks as it is for
whites.” The goal should be to “grow
drug-resistant and violence-resistant
kids.”
Let’s face it: If Obama or Attorney
General Eric Holder had given the
same speech (and they’ve said many
of these things), the response would
have been political and in some cases
nasty. This only underscores why it
was essential for the words to come
from a white director of the FBI.
Was Comey trying to shift some of
the heat away from police and toward
society as a whole? No, because he
was clear on law enforcement’s need
to examine and reform itself. But yes,
he was trying to concentrate our en-
ergies on the root causes of crime,
and good for him.
It’s worth remembering that lib-
erals were once attacked for being
“root causers” trying to downplay
the problem of criminality itself. But
maybe it takes a cop’s grandson to
prod us to act on both the problem of
racism and the economic, sociologi-
cal and familial challenges faced by
young African-American men.
In this sense, Comey really is a
subversive. He’s trying to subvert and
thus transform a debate that leads us
into ideological cul-de-sacs. He must
stay at it.
(Washington Post Writers Group)
Monied college sports need reforms
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The line between college and pro-
fessional football appear to have be-
come more and more blurred with
each passing season. Just the other day,
for example, the media announced
that one Vernon Adams, who has been
a star quarterback with Eastern Wash-
ington University and could play there
this fall in his senior year, has switched
schools to play at the University of
Oregon. His move adds up to money
considerations and that’s what profes-
sional football’s all about.
Last week during national signing
day, the UO reported 22 signees for
the 2015-16 football season. These
signees will be granted the same if
not greater fi nancial-aid through
lavish scholarships from the univer-
sity similar to what’s promised Adams
and will receive cost-free tuition, the
benefi t of free tutoring with class-
room assignments, use of one of
the fi nest workout facilities in the
United States, no-cost transporta-
tion, meals and accommodations at
away UO football games and other se-
cret free stuff and privileges unknown
to non-athletic students. Again, it’s
money, money and more money.
Incidentally, among the UO sign-
ees, with those lavishly attractive
scholarships, is not one single Oregon
high school player. Instead, the an-
ticipated roster of 22 includes nine
from California, three from Wash-
ington state, three from Hawaii, two
from Georgia, and one from other
states, numbering among the big-time
winners for a free college education
and possible NFL draft status if they
perform on the gridiron as hoped.
OSU football has announced one Or-
egon signee.
Meanwhile, coach Mark Helfrich is
the only one associated with the UO
football program
who’s actually
from the state:
he hails from
Coos Bay. Hel-
frich is believed
to be the highest
paid among Or-
egon’s public employees. He recently
signed a fi ve-year contract extension
where he will receive $3,500,000 a
year plus other perks, an amount, inci-
dentally, close to $3 million more than
the UO president who administers
the entire university.
It would seem that some measures
of reform are in order, that Oregonians
would rise up as one to protest what’s
happened to state scholarship money
as the composition of Oregon’s public
college football teams is foreign-built.
Were authority granted to Orego-
nians to bring change to our big state
schools wouldn’t the following take
place:
1. Separate the football programs
from any participation by the team
players in classes or campus activities
during the football season because
the team players are now profes-
sional athletes. They are paid through
means that attempt to disguise their
non-amateur status by which money
is thrown at them to provide them a
free ride. Since they are essentially
professional athletes, let them enroll
for classes and work on their college
degrees throughout the reminder of
the academic year but not during fall
term. Further, chances are greater
they’d receive a real college education
that way.
2. Winning has always meant a great
deal but nowadays it’s become the only
value with little or no sportsmanship
or character-building taking place as
gene h.
mcintyre
can be seen by law-breaking incidents
among the players. Hence, let the
support of school football programs
be totally self-suffi cient. Thereby, no
more student assessment fees, regular
students serving football players as
tutors, and the use of state taxpayer
money to quietly fund this and that
football-related matter at OSU and
UO.
3. Let coach salaries come only
from game proceeds and alumni giv-
ing. Since football at the state schools
is no longer an amateur sport, keep
the coaches out of PERS as they now
only skew the numbers by their ridic-
ulously high salaries so that those who
fi nd fault with PERS use them as
examples to attack, as profl igate, all
PERS retirees.
It is hoped that the next presi-
dent of UO will make a real and sus-
tained effort to bring about a balance
there between sports programs and
academic pursuits. That he or she will
embrace the mission established in
UO’s 1876 founding to make certain
that those who come to learn enjoy
and gain the most from their years on
campus. That Oregon’s public univer-
sity in Eugene be governed by the
trustees and UO president and less
so by the deep pockets of wealthy
alumni who favor a sports win, win,
win mentality while not much of any-
thing else for which a university has
been dedicated to stand for and serve
is a consideration to them.
(Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap-
pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)
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