The American Spectator

Special Report

(Page 2 of 2)

The Virginia Tech shootings had only recently occurred, and they were still on everyone's mind. Somberly, she retold the still very fresh and stunning story of Virginia Tech's Professor Liviu Librescu, who had saved the lives of his students by physically blocking the doorway to his classroom so his students could escape by jumping from the windows. In doing so Librescu, a Romanian Jew and Holocaust survivor, deliberately gave up his own life, shot repeatedly by the crazed gunman. Musing on the sheer courage shown by Librescu, freely admitting she had no idea what she would have done in similar circumstances, she began to focus on the importance of each individual life and the best use we can all make of the limited time granted us with that life.

It was the kind of speech that could really only be delivered by someone who has been through the valley and come face-to-face with -- herself. You could hear a pin drop in the carpeted ballroom.

p> ONE OF MY FAVORITE FILMS is the Robert Redford classic based on Bernard Malamud's novel The Natural . It's the story of Roy Hobbs, the gifted and golden young baseball player whose sole objective is to play baseball so well that people will say, "there goes Roy Hobbs, the best there ever was." Redford/Hobbs sets off on his quite innocent journey, leaving behind girl friend Iris Gaines, only to be derailed almost immediately, shot and wounded by a mysterious Lady in Black, a beautiful psychopath who has a thing for killing young athletes. Instead of spending his prime playing major league baseball, Hobbs emerges in the film decidedly in middle age, trying one more time to actually make the big leagues and "be the best there ever was." Making it, his past catches up with him and he is hospitalized before the Big Game, possibly unable to play in what would be the last and most important game of his amazingly successful one-year career. Visited in the hospital by the newly rediscovered Iris, Hobbs muses that his life didn't turn out the way he expected. "How so?" asks Iris. "Just different," he shrugs. Iris, who unknown to Hobbs is the mother of his young son, understands, offering this bit of wisdom: br> /p>

Iris: You know, I believe we have two lives.

Hobbs: How...what do you mean?

Iris: The life we learn with, and the life we live with after that.

The other day I received a phone call from a woman I did not know whom I will refer to here, radio talk-show style, as Hattie from Ohio. Hattie, it seems, had come across my web site, and called to tell me she was getting involved in some new activities and wanted to know how she could inform people of this on the site. Hattie identified herself as an African-American woman, leaving me with the impression that she was just possibly over 80-something. She was quite funny about all this, her voice strong but unmistakably "older." For most of the call I simply listened to her energetic plans to get word out about a group she was starting to educate people about economics. The thought that went through my mind, quite apart from admiring her energy, was "why?" Why, at her age, was she going to all this trouble?

As if reading my mind she quickly gave me an answer. Hattie from Ohio was going to all this trouble because, she said, "Laura Ingraham says we should be citizen reporters, and that's what I'm going to do."

I was, I have to say, speechless. And that certainly doesn't happen often.

Laura Ingraham, at a relatively young age, has now lived the life she learned with. She's had loving parents and siblings, a good education, turns in the White House and the Supreme Court, a law firm and the media. Not bad. Her Aeschylus moment -- the death of a beloved parent, terrifying illness, a love lost -- are behind her now. She is embarked on what Iris Gaines called the life we live with after that, asking exactly the right questions of both herself and others: What are we here for? What is this thing called America? What are we going to do with it?

Power to the People is one of the first steps on that next journey for Laura, the journey that involves answering those questions, and she clearly means to make it count. Like Roy Hobbs her life has not turned out the way she may have expected. It's different. But as a direct result the people who will benefit from that fact, quite aside from Laura Ingraham herself, are all the rest of us.

Just ask Hattie from Ohio.

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