The Unawriter's Lair

One of the Few.

Enough Good Men. That was the title of a novel by Charles Mercer which detailed the opening years of the American Revolution. One of the points he made was this: when our people face a crisis, enough good men, and now women, step forward to risk everything for the greater good.

Today we've learned that we lost another one of the Few who've stepped forward since 9-11 to fight our nation's enemies. Captain Bruno de Solenni died on Saturday in Afghanistan, victim of a roadside bomb. He was a veteran of three overseas deployments.

I did not know Captain de Solenni well, but we were in New Orleans together. I remember talking with him about his experiences with the 39th Brigade. He served with 2-162 during the Iraq deployment in Alpha Company and on the battalion staff. He'd been a liaison officer to brigade and had some insight on how that relationship between Arkansas and Oregon functioned in Baghdad.

Captain de Solenni also served in Egypt on a prior deployment. He volunteered for the Afghanistan mission, where he served as a member of an embedded training team in the Kandahar area, which has to be one of the most dangerous regions in the country right now.

My heart goes out to his family, his friends, and his fellow brothers-and-sisters-in arms who are all hurting tonight. You are all in my prayers.

John Bruning

Volley & Thunder

During my time in New Orleans in 2005, bearing witness to the deaths of so many pets--dogs and cats--was one of the hardest things for me to experience. Being a life long animal lover, my instincts all urged I save as many as possible. Frankly, I had to resist that impulse, as I was in no position to that while embedded with 2-162.

Nevertheless, I did help rescue an injured female pit bull, and also helped rescue a dying orange kitten out of a motel. The kitten ended up with Mark & Shannon Martin, big-hearted folks from Athens, Georgia who had come to New Orleans to save as many critters as possible. In October, Mark & Shannon sent the kitten to us here in Oregon, and he became my office cat. Volunteers is my living reminder of our time in New Orleans. As such, he is a cat that gets pretty much everything he wants.

After his ordeal, which included two weeks without food, a week in a cage in a Winn Dixie parking lot in 100+ degree heat and humidity, and a two long cross-country journeys, we decided that this cat would have a unique and most uncat-like existence.

Volley quickly demonstrated an affinity for car travel. Early on, he loved driving in our '98 Explorer, so we took him all over the valley in it. He'd curl up between the kids in back until we got wherever we were going. Using the Explorer to get us around, he and I have hiked all over the parks in the Coast Range. He loves the woods, and he has no problem sticking close to me as we wander around.

When I bought the GTO and essentially retired the Explorer for COB use only , I was a little nervous putting Volley in it. He, however, had no qualms at all. The first day I drove it home, he was sitting in the front yard wondering why he didn't get to go with us to the dealership. As I parked and threw the door open, he jumped right in and checked the new ride out. He found it more than acceptable.

These days, we are frequently seen around town in the Goat. The writer drives, his cat side-kick rides shotgun and often peers out the windshield with his paws on the dash. When I rev the car at a stoplight (usually to intimidate a V6 Mustang parked next to us!) I swear the little orange bugger busts out a big ole' grin.  

The local drive-through coffee baristas are long used to the black Goat with its unusual passengers, and they usually spoil Volley with his own cup of whipped cream. The restaurants around town know him as well, and the owners usually send me back to the office with a variety of little treats for him. For awhile, he lived on diced bacon and ham from Andy's Cafe. He tends to get a lot of comments, most of which seem to center on his rather skunk-like appearance. "Is that a cat, or a skunk you've dyed orange?" See the photographic evidence and make your own judgment!

These days, Volley splits time between the Lair, which is his primary residence, and the house. If I don't have time to take him out on a walk, I'll drop him off at the house so he can prowl and get some exercise on his own. But when it is time to get back to the Lair, he's either waiting next to the GTO, or comes running when I whistle the Oregon fight song. This latter trick annoys the local Beaver fans, which of course makes it that much sweeter!

Now that the front yard has a number of Pontiacs in it, I figured Volley would be confused as to which car we'd be driving on any given day. Actually, what transpired caused me to pause and wonder if the little beast doesn't have a favorite ride. Ninety percent of the time, he waits next to the Goat when it's time to return to the Lair. However, every now and then, he'll go sit next to the G8 or the Solstice and refuse to budge. I'll open the Goat's door, but he'll just be stubborn until I relent and go with whatever he wants to ride in.

Nevetheless, he always returns to the GTO and always seems more excited and animated when we're in it. In the other cars, he usually just curls up in my son's booster seat. In the GTO, he's all about the ride and watches the road with almost comic intensity.

Just to see how he'd react, I took him out to King's Valley not too long ago during a writing break. On a deserted back road, I opened the Goat up and pinned him to the back seat. Thunder really will do 0-60 in 4.6 seconds, and Volunteers got to experience that amazing speed first hand.

 Instead of being afraid, or freaking out, he moved to the shotgun seat and planted his front paws on the dash. With Volley stretched out from seat to dash, we roared down the road at a mighty fun clip. When I eased up on the throttle, I swear he looked disappointed.

John Steinbeck is my all-time favorite writer.  I've thought long and hard about taking some time off between books and retracing Steinbeck's Travels with Charley route in reverse. Only instead of Steinbeck's custom rig, I'd take Thunder and substitute my Katrina refugee for Charley. Certainly, the sight of a muscle car and an orange cat in the small towns Steinbeck visited would prompt interesting conversations. Around town, we've made new friends when I'm asked why I've got a cat in my car :). Perhaps someday we'll do it.

If we do, we'll keep New Orleans off the travel itinerary.

The Devil's Sandbox

For those of you who have stumbled into my lair-on-the-web, I'm sure you are wondering why the hell a civilian has all this stuff about the National Guard posted here. Good question.

In the fall of 2004, I met Spike Olsen, one of the Bravo Company soldiers from 2-162 who served in Najaf and Fallujah. We spent about two hours talking while he was home on leave, and I learned more from him about what was going on in Najaf than everything I'd read in the papers and on-line about the battle. I saw a disconnect, and wanted to explore it.

In 2005, after I finished Ship Strike Pacific and Luck of the Draw, I thought about Spike and the Oregon guys in Iraq. At first, I wanted to write an article about them, but after I contacted General Byrne and asked him if the ONG would assist me in writing about the unit, it became clear the Volunteers deserved a book.

Thus, I was launched on what became the most difficult and emotional year I've ever had as a professional writer. I started by interviewing some of the wounded men who were undergoing medical treatment here in Oregon. Shane Ward, Vinni Jacques, Pete Wood, Andy Hellman--they impressed me so much with their commitment, their total belief in cause and sense of duty that I realized I'd stumbled onto a unique group of human beings.

A few weeks later, when 2-162 came home, I was on the tarmac at McChord Field taking photos. Dawson Officer walked up to me and said hello. He'd been one of my wife's all-time favorite students at Central High School, and I never even knew he was in Iraq. The cluelessness of that hit me very hard, and as we embraced I started to bawl. Seriously, it was not pretty. I'd basically let Dawson down during the most difficult year of his life. I should have known he was over in Iraq and made sure he was well-stocked with care packages and news from home.

The only way I could make it up to these neighbors and fellow Oregonians was to write a book and show the rest of the country that these men not only deserved recognition, but that they redefined the standards expected of a National Guard unit in combat.

Three weeks later, thanks to Eric Hammel and Richard Kane, we had a contract. I spent most of 2005 interviewing the Volunteers. It led me to some interesting places, and I heard so many heart-breaking stories that at times I felt overburdened with despair. At the same time, I heard plenty of humorous things and learned that life in Iraq for the infantry was a topsy-turvey world of extremes.

I also started to see the cost of the deployment. Wrecked marriages. Broken families. Good men hurting from survivor's guilt and PTSD. That side I under-reported in the Devil's Sandbox, not to avoid the issue, but I simply ran out of space. Everyone came back from Iraq with their own scars, and as I interviewed them, they were still processing their experiences and trying to make sense of it.

The book became something more than a professional project. I still don't know really how to describe it, but I know when I'm 90 years old, sitting on my porch, I will look back and say that in this effort, I gave my best and tried to do something significant. In the process, I became a different person.

The courage and devotion these men displayed in Iraq is one of the highlights of The Devil's Sandbox. As I wrote about them, that bedrock commitment in an environment that at times seemed devoid of basic humanity while at the same time seemed overburdened by rules to uphold a sense of battlefield morality became one of the central themes of the book.  

It didn't sell as well I had hoped. But the truth is, the Volunteers saw their story recorded for posterity. The book is shelved in the Library of Congress and in libraries all over the country. It will be around for a long time, and future generations will know what these men did.

I conducted over 350 interviews with almost 100 people associated with 2-162. It was a monumental oral history research effort on a scale I'd never before attempted. What made the book even more challenging was that I didn't know the story until I finished interviewing. In every other project I've written, the proposal's chapter outline serves as the book's skeleton. When I get to work, it is to put the meat on the bones. Not so with the Volunteers. I never saw anything that gave me a basic overview of what had happened during the deployment. I had to dig around and find out what the significant events were, and as a result I discovered significant things at very late periods in the book's development. New things kept popping up that needed to be written down. When I finished, the first pass was 959 pages, 190,000 words. I had contracted for 90,000, so I spent a week hacking out some of my favorite parts of the book to get it down to a marketable size.

Researching the book led me to embed with 2-162 when the men went to New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. There, I made lasting friendships during the trials we experienced there. The men hated the mission, wished they could have done more to help and search for survivors, but they did what was ordered with dedication I've never seen in the private sector. Twenty hour days were common for the officers and NCO's. They worked harder in the heat, humidity and carnage than anyone I'd seen in the three corporations I've worked for in my lifetime. It made me ashamed of my own efforts in the past, and I promised myself that I would match their commitment as I wrote their story.

For what it is worth, I did. I lived in my office for three months, sleeping on the floor between writing sessions. The cat we rescued in New Orleans was the only company I had for days at a time. My family didn't see me. For all they were concerned, I could have been deployed again instead of ten minutes from the house in the Lair. At the time, the advance I had received was not a lot of money, so I tried not to use the heat in the office. At night, I froze my ass off, and that finally caught up with me. I came down with pneumonia and ended up in bed for a month. I still wrote whenever I could, however, even if it was only for an hour or two a day.

The book shipped to the stores in the fall of 2006. I did a lot of radio and some TV appearances to support it, which led to a rash of e-mails and phone calls I never expected. The vast majority of those who read it, both from the battalion and those outside it and the Guard had nothing but positive things to say about it. The reviews were universally good. One called the book the best one written on the National Guard in years. Some of the soldiers wrote very emotional letters of thanks. One officer gave me his battalion's coin, #4, after I spoke at a conference at Rilea. Captain Morris made my night when he did that, and the coin is one of my treasured possessions.

At the same time, some of the men from Bravo Company hated the book and felt I'd done them a huge injustice.  I heard through one soldier's grandmother that the New York soldiers attached to Delta Company were extremely angry at what I wrote about them. There were also some stupid mistakes--misspelled names being among the worst. Men in other companies felt that I hadn't written enough about them and too much about Bravo Company.

I'd never had any of my previous books generate negative comments. All had been reviewed very well, and the participants in the events I wrote about were all very positive. This was new territory for me, and I didn't handle it well.

On Veteran's Day, after the Governor of Oregon spoke, I gave a speech in Salem at the dedication of a new Iraq/Afghanistan memorial. I threw everything I had into that speech, and when it was over, Kenny Leisten's dad bear-hugged me with such emotion that I'll never forget it. Two minutes later, the widow of one of the soldiers I had not mentioned in the speech (not intentionally), spoke to me of the extreme pain and disappointment the book had inflicted on her and her family. She finished by saying she wished that I had not written anything about her husband, as that would have been better than what I had put on the paper.

There are no words to explain just how devastating that was to hear, especially since I didn't write anything but positive things about her husband. Minutes later, the family of another one of 2-162's fallen came up to me and said some of the nicest, most profoundly moving things that anyone has ever said to me. The extremes proved too much. I went home and locked myself away from everyone for the rest of the day and night.

From that point on, I never knew what to expect in public, or how I would be received. In Eugene the next day, we had a book signing in which over 300 people showed up. It was an amazing event that stretched from the two hours Barnes & Noble had alloted to over six. Afterwards, Jenn and I went to dinner with several of the scouts and Charlie Company members. Wonderful evening.

A few weeks later, I had lunch with Terry and Colonel Scott McCrae, two human beings who have more dignity and grace, more love of our country and a devotion to its fundamental values than just about any couple I've ever met. That afternoon at their house remains for me one of the highlights of the book's aftermath.

As you can see, the book has been a rollercoaster like nothing else I've ever experienced. Some of the best friends I've ever had came from my involvement with 2-162. On the flip side, the book's release prompted some of the most emotional and difficult moments in my life. I wasn't prepared to deal with that at first, but I've learned to ride the wave. I worked hard to do my best to represent the Volunteers as they deserved.

The friendships I still have with the NCO's and officers of 2-162 drove me to found the 973rd COB, and it is the reason why I continue to write about these men and their families. This is an extraordinarily difficult time to be in the National Guard. It takes a level of dedication and devotion that most humans simply don't have in them. I tried to highlight those things in the Sandbox, and in the months to come, I'll continue to do so in every venue I can.

John Bruning

http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Sandbox-Battalion-162nd-Infantry/dp/0760323941/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221848416&sr=8-1

thedevilssandbox.com

The Snickers Bar Challenge

Recently, I received a phone call from SFC Alan "The Legend" Ezelle offering me a piece of some upcoming action at A Co. Easy explained that if he could raise $400, SSG Brian Hambright would attempt to eat 50 full-sized Snickers bars in 40 minutes and not yak for 30 minutes.

How can a historian resist this?? The company had raised $310 so far, so I threw in the other $90. This weekend, SSG Hambright will man up and demonstrate the prowess of his marine-tempered, mortar-team hardened, infantryman's stomach in this marathon binge of epic proportions.

Stay tuned, campers! My condition for slapping the 90 bucks down was to have the opportunity to shoot photos of the event, which is scheduled for this weekend.

Hopefully, we'll get some good shots that pretty much guarantee this writer a cushy six-figure government job should Brian ever run for public office....:)

How Much Room Does a Solstice REALLY Have?

Okay, if you're in the market for an entry-level roadster, you've probably read all the reviews you can find on such fine vehicles as the Mazda Miata, the Porche Boxster, the Honda S2000, and the Pontiac Solstice.

If you're still on the fence, I'd like to throw out two recent observations about our Solstice GXP. First, every review I've read underscores the Pontiac's lack of storage space. One critic went so far as to say that the Solstice doesn't make a good weekend getaway car because you can't even fit an overnight bag in it.

In rebuttle: bunk. Last week, I took our GXP over the Coast Range mountains and up to Camp Rilea, which is a few miles south of Astoria on the Oregon Coast. The 973rd supported the Eugene SWAT team's training exercises up there, and I had come prepared for OPFOR work, plus work on my latest book. Packed into the Solstice was:

1. One large duffel with a week's worth of clothes, including role-player related clothing, cold weather gear, and and a business casual outfit for an end-of-training banquet.

2. Sleeping bag.

3. Camera bag with DSLR, two lenses, external flash, five batteries and a recharger.

4. Tactical bag with misc. gear for the week.

5. Laptop bag with computer and all my notes for my current book.

6. Two 9mm blank-firing pistols. Four gas training pistols, an M14 and shotgun.

I drove both ways with the top down, and still had room to spare. Here is why: the way the trunk was designed is a little deceptive. At first glance, it looks like the top takes up the entire space. Not true. There are all sorts of nooks and crannies that with a little intelligent planning, can be used to store all sorts of stuff, including bags. Needless to say, it has plenty of room for an overnight bag for a weekend getaway for two. If you can't fit what you need in the GXP, you're overpacking by about 400%!

Second observation: Critics griped about the stiffness of the clutch and the gearshift in manual transmission versions. I agreed with this when I first got our GXP. It was very hard to ease it into first and second gear without popping it. I attributed this to my own inexperience with a clutch, but after I put 3,000 miles on the car, the way it shifted changed. Currently, we're just under 4K miles with it, and now it shifts with butter-smooth effortlessness on par with the MX5 I drove during the summer. All it needed was some time to be broken in.

The GTO has all the power a human being needs out of an automobile. The G8 has all the cushy bells & whistles, power and handling a family sedan ever needs. But in terms of sheer driving joy, nothing I've ever driven comes close to the Solstice GXP. I've driven it now on two long road trips (Idaho and Rilea), and it never ceases to draw a crowd, earn comments like, "That thing's a PONTIAC???" It is impossible to get sleepy while driving long distances--it is too much fun to get bored and drowsy. With another 50-60 horsepower and some rethinking of the interior ergonomics (read location of the cupholders), the Solstice would have no peer under $40K.

Further Adventures of the 973rd COB

This week, the 973rd COB is back in action, this time as role-players for the Eugene SWAT Team during their annual training at Camp Rilea. Mark, Bethany, Kyle, Andrew, David A.,  Aaron, Joe M., Jessica and I are up here learning to make the transition from insurgent scumbag to criminal perp. The photos here show the group's masters of disguise at work.

This is very different work from what we did with MRT and with the 2-162 on drill weekends. So far, we've been bank robbers and hostages, drunken, stoned rednecks who've taken our wives hostage for sleeping around, and various murderers, drug-dealers, gamblers, suicidal city hall employees and general passer-bys.

The most interesting component so far has been the interplay between the Crisis Negotiation Team and our distraught criminal, gun-toting, mullet-haired 973rd perps. Basically, those conversations are a dip in the deep end of the psychological pool, and they always result in a constantly evolving mind game between scumbag (us) and crisis negotiator.

We've had to ramp up our acting skills, and nobody has done a better job of that than David A., whose suicide by cop moment should have earned him an Academy Award. David was a distraught city employee who'd brought a gun and some hooch to work, then barricaded himself in his office and planned to whack himself. Ultimately, he came out of city hall, wielding his pistol at the SWAT guys, and they dropped him with multiple shots. David then slumped and lay there dead on the steps without moving for at least ten minutes while the SWAT guys cleared the building.

More later!

Reward for Justice: Addendum

Going through my photos of New Orleans tonight, I noticed something I missed while still in the city. The police SUV that I thought belonged to the officers who threw the pistol into the fire was actually present along the rail road embankment the evening before the incident. The Cadillac was also there for several days, so I doubt it was associated with the police who lit the fire.

The police SUV was marked NS for Norfolk Southern Police. This is a railroad law enforcement agency. It drove up to the end of Old Gentilly Road on the evening of the 11th while I was speaking with Gretel. It was not there when we first arrived on the scene to help her injured friend, and I vaguely remember now that the SUV rolled up while I was interviewing her. I don't remember seeing any of the officers, nor did I photograph any of them on the 11th. The following morning when SFC Houston's platoon had those shots pass overhead, we returned to the same spot where Gretel's group had been and found the SUV in virtually the same place. I don't know if it left and came back, or simply remained there overnight. I can't determine from my photos when the vehicle was removed, or if it was related to the officers in the photographs I took on the 12th.

Details of the vehicle and NS from their web site:

"The Norfolk Southern Railway Police Department is a law enforcement agency headquartered in Roanoke, Virginia, with agents assigned to over 50 field offices responsible for police operations in 22 states. Railway Special Agents have a unique place in the history of law enforcement in North America."

So where these NSPD officers, or NOPD? There's no way to tell from the photos I have. Any further leads would be greatly appreciated.

John

The Angel of New Orleans

  On the evening of Sunday, September 11, 2005, I was out with a patrol from Bravo Company checking on the hold outs in the Indian Village, the desperately poor community on the south side of Gentilly Road.

We went out to check on a forty-four year old woman named Mimi Bartholomew who had survived the flooding in her neighborhood by standing on a crate in her bathroom. She refused to leave her house—she’d been born there and had nothing else in this world but that modest piece of property. She was also diabetic.

Will Cokel, one of the battalion’s medics, had come out to try and get her blood sugar level since she had been without useable insulin since the power failed on the 29th of August. Mimi quickly impressed all of us as a true piece of work. She was chatty and fresh and full of a sense of independence. Truth was, under the façade I think she was very scared, and very glad to have the attention of a full platoon of soldiers.

Shortly after leaving Mimi’s house, we came across Harold and his son. Harold lived about four blocks from Mimi’s place, and his son had come to stay with him during the flooding. His son had this little go-cart, and we’d seen him zipping around the devastation in the AO on and off throughout the day. Turned out, he had an eye infection, and Will had him lie down on the hood of a derelict car so he could treat him with anti-biotic drops.

I took photos of all of this, then linked back up with Will when he finished up. Together, we trailed SSG Sean Davis’ platoon back toward the Baptist Seminary. The sunset suffused the area in a reddish glow that made the landscape of abandoned cars, tilted stop lights and downed power lines look almost apocalyptic.     

 We walked across Old Gentilly Road, the Seminary in sight, looking forward to MRE’s and a few hours of sleep. Will and I were deep in a very serious and personal discussion when a woman started shouting for help. We looked over toward the railroad embankment where the police had burned a pistol earlier in the day and saw a group of volunteers huddled around a small boat. “We need a medic!” the woman called to us. “We have an injured man.” Will took off running, and I trailed behind. When we reached the group, we found the man had been bitten by a dog he’d rescued while out on a boat patrol just a few minutes before we arrived.

Will opened his medical gear and went to work, swabbing and cleaning the wound. In the meantime, I struck up a conversation with the woman. She was blond, very beautiful but with features that betrayed a soul-weariness I connected with immediately.

After all the self-inflicted damage we’d seen to the neighborhood we’d come to stabilize, I had become very bitter about the exposed reality of human nature. I couldn’t believe Americans could do this do each other. Not once had we seen any local show even the slightest bit of selflessness.

 Then I met Gretel. She was the woman who called over to us, and as we stood watching Will work on her friend, I learned her story. All of 28 years old, she’d been working as an ER nurse on Long Island, New York, when Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. As the scenes of devastation and despair played across the TV screens at the hospital, she resolved to do something about it. She finished a twelve hour shift, got her daughter to her mom’s house, and drove to New Orleans.

That selflessness came at a great personal cost. Her hospital told her that if she left, her job would not be waiting for her when she returned. She was also set to start the physician’s assistant program at Adelphi University in a few weeks. When she called and told them she probably wouldn’t make the start of the new school year, they told her that she’d lose her slot in the program. Her decision to help those in New Orleans cost her the job that supported her family and the chance of a better future for herself and daughter.

How many people can say they’d give those things up and travel the breadth of the country to take care of total strangers?

As I stood face to face with Gretel, scribbling in a notebook as we talked, I realized I had met a human being whose profound depth of humanity and selflessness served as a counter-balance to everything we’d seen. Her story staggered me.

She made her way into the city and ended up at the LSU basketball arena, which had become a makeshift hospital. Day after day, hundreds of dead, dying and wasted human beings struggled through the arena doors. Nursing home residents appeared, some of whom had no names and only “DNR” (Do Not Resuscitate) scrawled on across their foreheads in black ink. Gretel worked non-stop for days.

At one point, she finally found a few minutes to take a break, and she stepped out front for some air. Down the street came a vagabond, obviously in distress. He staggered toward the arena, then collapsed in the street. Gretel turned to go get a pair of gloves, and when she returned, she found a reporter filming the man’s distress. Ignoring the hack, she rushed to the man’s aid. The reporter complained and said she’d just ruined his shot.

She wheeled on the reporter and asked the one question that I know just about every sentient American has wanted to ask those who film human misery, “Why didn’t you help this man?”

“It isn’t my job.” The camerman said defensively.

Gretel didn’t let him off the hook, “You are a human being, of course it is your job.”

Wow. I listened to this in stunned silence, hardly able to contain the tears I felt building up behind the façade I was trying to maintain. After the last patients made it out of the arena, Gretel attached herself to an animal rescue group and set off into the city in search of dying critters. Along the way, she saved a German shepherd that captured her heart. She resolved to get him back to Long Island as a gift for her daughter.

As her words poured out, we both became emotional. All the pent up trauma she’d experienced, all the misery, chaos and sadness she’d witnessed, flowed out in this one conversation. I couldn’t believe she wasn’t embittered by her experience.

When I asked her about that, she told me the people kept her spirits up. She had a very different experience than we did. Those who made it to the arena were utterly grateful, full of quiet strength and hope. They didn’t fight or push or get violent. They waited patiently as the desperately outnumbered doctors and nurses did their best to care for them. In them, she saw the bright of human nature. That's exactly what I found in her.

As we stood beside the edge of the floodwater, I felt my spirits lift. Gretel’s tale was what I expected to find when we first stepped on the plane to come down to New Orleans. This was the sort of American we could all be proud of: determined, capable, courageous, selfless- a rock in the center of the storm.

Overcome, we both started to cry. We embraced, and I realized as I held this woman who moments before had been a complete stranger that I would never make it as a journalist. I am not put together to be unbiased or dispassionate. I am a writer, not a reporter.

This woman and her strength of character had single handedly restored what I had lost out in the ruins of the Gentilly neighborhood: my faith in my fellow human beings. After seeing the worst of what we can do to each other at the meat market, I’d found a person who embodied the best of us.

I hugged her and felt reborn.

  Later, as Will and I walked back to the Seminary, I broke down again. A surge of sadness swept over me, and as I tried to explain what I’d learned to Will, in the back of my mind I struggled with why I felt so despondent.

I only figured that out long after the company had turned in for the night. I lay under my poncho liner on the walkway out in front of the Seminary’s music hall. Overhead, helicopters buzzed back and forth over the blackened city. Across from me, Spike Olsen was snoring like a congested heffer. Vinni Jacques was sawing wood, too. I stared out into the night’s sky, watching the helicopters paint the area with search lights until revelation struck.

 Hindsight always shows us the defining moments of our lives. We can look back on decisions or events that shape who we are. Meeting Gretel was one of those high water marks for me. At age 38, I had no doubt that I had encountered the finest human spirit I’d ever meet. I could not help but to mourn the passing of that moment.

Three years later, I’m more convinced than ever of the righteousness of that epiphany.