Dear Susan:
Your husband's ancestor was a TRUE hero, a word much bandied about
nowadays but
not much understood. Aaron Way was a farmer who could've joined the flock,
pointed the finger, and watched the witch die. Nobody would have blamed him.
Things were tough back then, and Aaron and his relatives still found the
backbone to stand up and argue for reason--even tho' Aaron's own infant daughter
was the supposed victim. That's the sort of courage that brings a lump
to my
throat, and reminds me what a true hero is. Aaron and his family, as
did most
early settlers who dug their hands in the dirt or cast their nets upon
the sea,
lived on the knife-edge of survival. The fact that he and his family were
willing to find both time and space on that knife edge to stand up for
what they thought was right--no matter how unpopular that stand was with
the population at
large--says more than a lot for them. It says it all!
A hero is someone who goes above and beyond the call of duty. Someone
who is
willing to follow the call of conscience, no matter what the neighbors think.
Most of the people who died on 9/11 were not heros, much as the news
media would
like to portray them as such. They just happened to be in the wrong
place at
the wrong time. A fireman or a policeman who went into the towers to
bring out
the entrapped were heros. The workers in the building who carried down
a woman
who could not walk, thereby shortening the time left for their own
flight to
safety, were heros. All the rest were, sad to say, victims, just doing their
jobs or trying to get out.
I'd like to now say a thing or two about the word "coward."
Headlines of the New York Post and the New York Daily News branded the hijackers
as "cowards." Well, I don't think so. A man who is willing to die for a cause
he believes in (and I can't imagine anyone being willing to die for anything
less) is not a coward. He may have been what we would call a "fanatic."
His
mind may have been twisted; he may have been the most evil person on
earth; but
he was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a coward. The headlines said
otherwise, and a lot of papers were sold. The usage of the word, as far
as I
can see, still stands, and is still as wrong.
There was much evil done, and suffered, on 9/11. There were heros and,
probably, some cowards. But there were not 4,000 heros, and I argue
the point that the hijackers were cowards. I'd like to ask you all to
count to
ten, and then count to ten again, before jumping on my back about this. The
truth is plain.
Many of us have fathers who looked down through the bombsites over a darkened
enemy city, and let loose the bombs, not knowing who they would kill. They
presumed they were killing the enemy, as they had been told, but who knows?
Were your fathers heros or cowards?
Depends on who's telling the story, doesn't it?
Jeff
SusanG1400@aol.com wrote:
> Hello!
>
> My husband, Dr. A. Dane Bowen, Jr.'s mother's maiden name was Laura
> Sanders Way (Mrs. Adelphia Dane, Bowne, Sr.). Her Way ancestor, Henry Way
> came from Bridport, England with his wife and children to Dorchester,
> Massachusetts (today a part of Boston) on the ship Mary and John in 1630.
> Henry Way was a fisherman. His son Aaron Way was a farmer near Salem Village
> (now Danvers, Massachusetts). In 1689 someone said that a Mr. Wilkins was a
> witch and that he caused Aaron Way's infant daughter to die. Aaron Way and
> his relatives did not believe this. They went to the home of Reverend John
> Parrish, the minister in Salem, and said there were no witches. Aaron way
> condemned the witchcraft hysteria. Aaron Way died several years later. His
[ Excess quotations omitted. ]
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