OK, before I turn to the important task of telling you what's wrong with the two photographs I posted below, here's some words about Vernon Hunter, who was killed when Joseph Andrew Stack completed his suicide mission.
Community mourns loss of victim in plane crash
By Bobby Longoria
Staff, Daily Texan Online (University of Texas at Austin daily newspaper)
Published: Monday, February 22, 2010
It was dark inside the Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church on Sunday morning. Members of the congregation locked hands and bowed their heads to pray for their friend, Vernon Hunter, who died Thursday when preliminary suspect Joseph Andrew Stack flew his plane into the federal building where Hunter worked.
Hunter was 68 years old, but friends and family say his vitality and happiness suggested a much younger man. Hunter, an Internal Revenue Services employee for more than 20 years, and his wife Valerie worked at the building located near the intersection of Research and MoPac boulevards. During Sunday’s services, members of Hunter’s East Austin church remembered him as a loving husband, father of three, stepfather of three and grandfather of seven.
“He was a gracious man, just an outstanding soul,” said Gaylon Clark, lead pastor of the church.
Hunter volunteered at the church’s food and clothing pantry and assisted church members with preparing their income taxes. He served two tours in Vietnam and was described as the life of his community.
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Hunter’s family and members of the church said they harbor no ill will toward Stack or his family[....] church deacon Larry McDonald said. “We know Vernon would want us to move on and go on with our lives and be kind to people and giving to people. That’s the way he was.”
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Funeral services for Hunter will be held Friday at the St. James Missionary Baptist Church, and he will be buried with full military honors at the National Cemetery at Fort Hood. As the service ended, church members walked out into the sun bearing Hunter’s philosophy of kindness and love — for which he will always be remembered.
[full article]
It's curious, isn't it? A news search on Vernon Hunter turns up thousands of articles that are mainly about Stack. The article excerpted is the closest I could find to an obituary today. (I set up a news alert - I'll mention it if any/many others turn up.)
It makes me think of Crispus Attucks, generally considered the first victim of the British during the American Revolution, and, as Stevie Wonder reminds us, a black man, as was Mr. Hunter. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. made the bitter joke that students at a high school named after Attucks wore jackets that read "Innocent Bystander High." Will there be a high school named after Vernon Hunter? And what bitter joke might that inspire?
What will the monuments be for Joseph Stack?
Posts
The Bravest Apollo
8 years ago
Me again. Today's Google News search finds over 10,000 articles about Joseph Stack, 1,305 articles that mention Vernon Hunter but are mainly about Stack, and 1 article that mention's Hunter's upcoming funeral, which as a search term I thought would select articles with a greater interest in Mr. Hunter.
ReplyDeleteJoan Walsh has an article up at Salon about the coverage of Mr. Hunter's life and death: http://www.salon.com/opinion/walsh/politics/2010/02/22/vernon_hunter/index.html
I keep feeling as if I haven't given Mr. Hunter his due.
ReplyDeleteI think this is because I am nonplussed by the lack of significance assigned to Joseph Stack's actions by the mass media. I would like to have the questions raised by Stack settled in my own mind, but this is something that will take weeks if not longer to express here.
In that way, I am making my regard for Vernon Hunter dependent on my assessment of Joseph Stack - mimicking the way a victim's life is minimized by a killer's act.
So I simply want to say goodbye to Vernon Hunter. As a human being, he may well have been among the better of us. He was denied the opportunity to shape the conclusion to his life - and this I can call a crime.