This is a continuation of yesterday's blog about obituaries.
The two people for whom these obituaries were written were public figures and I was prompted to write about them for different reasons than the omission of parts of their life from their obituaries by spouse or friend. I wrote these because it was important to convey significant political lessons.
The first was about Ed Roberts, the founder of the human disability rights movement.
Ed's wife and friends wrote a good obituary, an accurate one.
But they missed the important element that made Ed the powerful and successful person he was.
Ed never tried to influence people through the Leftist appeal to their support for underdogs or sympathy for the downtrodden. Ed always appealed to people on the basis that other disabled were like him. They were great potential contributors to society who were not being appreciated. People so loved Ed that they wanted him to be a full and productive member of their life. And the same became true for other disabled.
I had to tell the world how Ed used this love of him to make changes for the benefit of millions.
In exactly the opposite realm, a very productive longtime friend of mine, Frances Peavey had a strong antagonism toward Jews. This antagonism was so strong that she, in her global peacemaking work, was able to accompany the Israeli army when it invaded Lebanon. The Israeli army, as is its character, would always notify civilians by pamphlet and loudspeaker, that it was approaching a town or village and that innocent people should leave.
No other army in history has ever behaved with such extraordinary moral clarity. Fran, because of her antagonism toward Jews, still complained about the ruthlessness and aggressiveness of the Israeli army, never mentioning its incredible moral actions.
Since her antagonism toward Jews permeated her decision-making, the articles she wrote, in ways that was never explicit, I had to make sure that it was in her obituary.
I wrote the obituary nine years before she died and made sure she knew about it. At one point she asked for mediation. We had the mediation and being the bleeding heart wimp that I am I toned down the obituary but she never changed anything because her Jew hate was not subject to rational review.
I simply wanted the world to understand that she was not a saint and that some of her actions were not unmitigatingly good.