Danforth's Eulogy For Tom Schweich: Words Do Hurt, Words Can kill

[loyalsister]

I think he's right. During campaigns, it has become so easy to forget that there are real people who have real feelings. They and their families have to absorb the personal attacks.

Tom told me of his Jewish grandfather who taught him about anti-Semitism, and told him that anytime Tom saw it, he had to confront it. So Tom believed that that was exactly what he must do.

There was no hint by Tom that this was about him or his campaign. It was about confronting bigotry.

I told Tom that it is important to combat any whiff of anti-Semitism, but I said that he should not be the public face of doing that. I told him that if he were to go public, the story would be all about him, and not about the evil he wanted to fight. I said that I was concerned about his political future, that his focus should be on winning election as governor, and that the best approach would be to have someone feed the story to the press and let the press run with it.

Tom said that the press would only run with the story if he went public, and that if he didn’t make an issue out of anti-Semitism, no one would.

That was the phone call, except at the end he seemed angry with me.It’s impossible to know the thoughts of another person at such a dire time as suicide, but I can tell you what haunts me. I had always told him to take the high ground and never give it up, and he believed that, and it had become his life. Now I had advised him that to win election he should hope someone else would take up the cause.

He may have thought that I had abandoned him and left him on the high ground, all alone to fight the battle that had to be fought.

I think there are two messages in this, one for Tom’s children, the other for the rest of us.
Emilie and Thomas, always be proud of your father. He has left you a legacy, a tradition to take up in your own lives. You will have to be very brave to do this, as he was brave, and it will require energy and devotion to the task, as he was energetic and devoted to his task. The legacy your father has passed on to you is this: to fight for what is right; to always seize the high ground and never give it up.

The message for the rest of us reflects my own emotion after learning of Tom’s death, which has been overwhelming anger that politics has gone so hideously wrong, and that the death of Tom Schweich is the natural consequence of what politics has become. I believe deep in my heart that it’s now our duty, yours and mine, to turn politics into something much better than its now so miserable state.

http://www.stltoday.com/news/opinion/danforth-s-eulogy-for-tom-schweich-words-do-hurt-words/article_cf861616-67b6-5fa6-ae29-97ca3a243ec9.html