Not A Statistic

To the Editor:

Last night I got a call from my daughter, Caitlin. She told me about her friend from college, TJ, who was just sent to Iraq a few of months ago. He was ROTC in college, as were a few of her friends there...kids raised to believe it was important to give back to their country and proud to do so. The government sent him to the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania for four years and now he was serving his four with the Army.

This past Tuesday, she and her friends got a call that TJ was hit, and thought dead. For four hours, Cait believed that this great guy was no longer alive, killed in the war, and suddenly her world was shattered by the reality of war. She knew people died, but thought somehow, it just happened to someone else’s loved ones. Then they got word that, no, he was alive, badly injured.

The details are unknown at this point, but he was shot in the face. He has lost his left eye and the bullet hit the frontal lobe of his brain. He is in a hospital in Germany, where another friend of Cait’s, Theresa, who was also ROTC and stationed there with the Army, went to visit him. She was not prepared to witness what she did when she walked in that room. The doctor said, “He can’t see you, but he can hear.” During that visit, he squeezed her hand, in a gesture, she hoped, indicated recognition and on some level, the possibility that he is going to be okay.

Whatever your feelings may be about this war, this is the reality of it. Young people are born to families who love them, raised to have lives full of possibilities and dreams, and live a long life. Then, something like this happens, a harsh reality thrown in our face. Something we can’t deny. These aren’t just “counts” of casualties or injured. They are children of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters to their siblings, friends, lovers. They are the youth that we prize. The future of our world and country. Where is his future? This has touched not just him, but his family and friends, in a way that they have never known.

He is not a statistic...

Please pray for his recovery and well-being.

And write. If you have an opinion about this war, write. Let the people in Washington who represent you know how you feel (no assumption here on what your opinion is, either). This is the Whitehouse page: www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

In Hope of Peace

Victoria Maybeck

40 Hundred Acres Road, Newtown                                  June 1, 2007