To shield or to prepare kids?
It seems eerily "beshert," which is Hebrew for "meant to be," that I opened my newspaper Aug. 11 to read an article about one mother's attempt to shield her children from a horrific murder across the street from her home ("A mother's shield," Aug. 11).
This mother is petrified that her 7- and 10-year-old daughters will learn the truth about this violence so close to home and describes how she evades questions about Littleton, Colo., Kosovo and other acts of violence.
I can certainly understand the urge to "spin" our world's craziness into language that is reassuring to children, yet I can't feel comfortable with Ms. Donovan's approach.
I had gone to bed the previous evening wondering how I would explain to my eldest, a 7-year-old, that a gunman had walked into a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles, indiscriminately shooting children and adults -- a JCC very much like the one where my family recently saw a play, where I have meetings frequently, one right next door to where Grandma works and where friends go to school and camp.
I tell my husband that I wish I could shield our kids from these horrors, that I don't want to let them out of the house. Perhaps if we lock the doors and close the shades, we will be able to protect them. But I know that we cannot.
I knew that I would have to say something truthful when my 7-year-old inevitably asked, as he did seconds after seeing the front page picture in the newspaper of small children holding hands, "Why are they with police officers?"
So I say that a gunman went into a building and shot people. He asks where and I tell him California. I know that later I will have to be specific and it will come out that these children were in a Jewish Community Center.
I know he will wonder, even if he doesn't say it, is it just like our JCC?
Using other words, he will be asking, "Am I safe?"
And I will try to reassure him by telling him that he is safe. We will probably talk about the fact that some people do terrible things to others.
I will make the point that some of these people are white, some are black, they are Jewish and non-Jewish. I will tell him that some people hate Jews, and he will probably ask me about his 90-year-old great-grandfather, who (at my urging) has begun sharing with my son some of his experiences in Nazi Germany.
I will tell him that sometimes things happen that we cannot explain. I will tell him that overwhelmingly people are good and, thankfully, he knows that through his own experience.
At the same time that I desperately want to shield my children, I want them to know, without knowing too much, about violence in our lives. I want them to know that there are people who suffer from violence, poverty or disease.
While I want to permit my kids every privilege and protection I am able, I also want them to be able to empathize -- to know that people are vulnerable and life is fragile. I want them to appreciate how fortunate they are, but I want this and the knowledge of life's horrors to lead them to become vital members of our society.
I want them to work for change, to repair the world, so that these issues are no longer dilemmas when they become parents.
So, while we lingered longer than usual in our home that morning, I took my children out into the world -- and I did so knowing that they are vulnerable, as we all are.
Shelly L. Hettleman
Baltimore
The juxtaposition of Myung J. Chun's photographs, especially the one on the front page, and Heather Donovan's article, "A mother's shield," was fortuitous (Aug. 11).
The policemen in Mr. Chun's front-page photo are shielding children from the horror and terror of the Los Angeles shooting, leading them to safety.
How would Ms. Donovan deal with these children? "How much confidence can a child raised in horror grow up with?" she asked.
My two children were about the ages of Ms. Donovan's children when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated.
It was a numbing experience for us, but we went to Washington to see his body brought to the Capitol and we watched on television the funeral procession to Arlington National Cemetery.
I think it helped my children. But I don't think it's deceitful of Ms. Donovan to take a different approach. Parents must cope with violence in their own way.
Tom Gill
North Beach
We call it "the bubble." We watch "Arthur" and "Barney," but no local or national news. They are too scary. We avoid discussing the tragedies of other families in Littleton, Colo. and Georgia. They are too real.
Acknowledging these painful experiences would break the delicate surface of the bubble we are intent on maintaining.
Our daughters are 7- and 4-years-old. They have so little time to be children. Childhood is a time for play and discovery. We want them to enjoy the sunflowers, splash in the creek and play with their friends -- feeling safe and surrounded by love.
The time will come when we will no longer be able to keep the bubble filled with these warm, happy thoughts and feelings. Then our kids will enter the cruel world that the rest of us ponder. But for now, this bubble will nurture them.
It is our gift to our daughters: A childhood filled with love and innocence.
M. P. Lowe
Westminster
In the weeks after the Columbine High School shooting, rumors circulated that something catastrophic would happen May 10 in the Maryland schools.
My husband and I could not block our kids from these baseless but panic-inducing rumors.
At times like these, I remember the Norman Rockwell painting "Freedom from Fear." It shows a husband and wife checking on their sleeping children, clutching a newspaper emblazoned with an awful wartime headline.
Somehow, I know they will kiss their children, shut the door and hide that newspaper.
We do not need to teach our children about the adult brand of purposeless pain. They will learn enough in small incidents in the lunchroom, on the bus, at the playground.
When the horror intrudes in spite of our efforts, we must meet it with an unyielding conviction that the world is a lovely place.
We sent our children to school on May 10, and I volunteered in the building that morning.
It was the only way to convey confidence in their ability to survive, in a world I refuse to concede is a horrible place.
Janet F. Gilbert
It is understandable that Heather Donovan would want to shield her daughters from the murder that took place in front of her building and go to great lengths, including lying, to shield her girls from learning that horrible crimes take place.
But even she acknowledges that trying to shield them from this knowledge is unrealistic.
When I look into my children's trusting, hopeful eyes, I, too, would like to tell them that the world is always a good and safe place. But, as we all know, it is not.
Although I wish my children would never have to learn that children and parents can die, I would not be helping them to understand and cope with life if I lied to them about death and disease.
For the same reason, I will not tell them crime never happens.
I do let my kids watch the news and glance at the headlines. I tell them that while most people are good and decent, some are not; that although terrible things "hardly ever happen," sometimes they do -- so we have to be extra careful, just in case.
I hope that, as I send them out into the beautiful but scary world, with caution rather than overprotectiveness, I am helping them to be prepared, aware and judicious -- so that they can thrive and make this planet a better place.
Nancy S. Spritz
Baltimore
F-22's power vital for a new century
The Sun recently published a series of articles on the Air Force's new F-22 fighter (July 18-20). I'd like to respond to the series' two main criticisms of the F-22 program: that the military's need for the F-22 is unclear and that it would cost too much to build that plane.
The series suggested that we don't need the F-22 because it was designed during the last days of the Cold War and the Cold War is over.
This argument is flawed because it assumes that the world has changed so much that air power and superiority will no longer be important. In fact, they will be more important than ever.
It is tempting to view the Cold War as the last major war we'll have to fight, but we have been in similar situations before.
When World War I ended, we believed the world was safe for democracy. Yet in less than a generation, Adolf Hitler rose to power in Germany and triggered World War II.
When World War II ended, the failure to acknowledge the potential for new conflicts and adversaries led to the Cold War as the Soviet Union expanded its influence -- and to the Korean War in the early 1950s.
The world celebrated the end of the Cold War in 1989, watching as Berliners pulled down the wall that had divided their city. Who would have thought that little more than a year later we would send half a million troops to the Persian Gulf to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait?
If there are lessons we can learn from the 20th century -- a century in which wars have killed 100 million people -- it is that danger is seldom as remote as we would like to imagine and that trouble will rear its ugly head on its own timetable, where we least expect it.
There will be new aggressors and air superiority will be required to deter or defeat them. Without air superiority, it is difficult to use any other kind of military power effectively.
The F-22 is the only new air-superiority fighter the Air Force has developed in the past quarter-century. Its production is a necessary price of preparedness in the next century.
We've just celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The same year we landed on the moon, 1969, the Air Force awarded the F-15 contract to what was then the McDonnell Aircraft Co.
The F-15 has done a fine job the past 30 years, but it just won't be up to the job of achieving air superiority against 21st-century threats that will be far deadlier than Serbia's outdated systems.
Fortunately, the price of preparedness is not as high as The Sun's series suggested.
The U.S. government budget for the year 2000 is projected at about $1.7 trillion. The defense budget of about $270 billion would be only 16 percent of federal spending. The full F-22 program requested in the president's budget is only about 1 percent of the requested defense budget.
Looked at another way, at present rates of spending, the F-22 constitutes only about 10 hours worth of federal spending.
In fact, the entire 20-year cost of developing and building all 339 F-22s -- $63 billion in current dollars -- only adds up to about two months of federal spending.
I am proud of the F-22. It will be the world's best fighter for decades to come. Human nature being what it is, I have no doubt that one day, probably sooner than we think, it will be all too obvious why the F-22 is essential to national security.
When the Air Force is called upon to establish air superiority, pilots must have the means to achieve it rapidly, with few or no casualties. The Air Force won't be able to run down to the local convenience store and pick up a supply of F-22s if they don't already have them on hand, ready to fly and fight.
That's why we need to build the F-22 today.
James Blackwell Jr.
Bethesda
The writer is president and chief operating officer of the aeronautics sector of Lockheed Martin Corp.
City not silent partner in real estate 'flipping'
I commend Sun reporter John B. O'Donnell for his recent articles on real estate "flipping" scams, in which unscrupulous speculators turn a huge profit on over-appraised houses at the expense of unsuspecting homebuyers ("House prices soar, sometimes in a day," Aug. 1 and "Legislators target profiteering from purchases of city property," Aug. 4).
The more buyers know of these quick-turn deals, the better off they will be. Homebuyers should work with a known entity, such as the many nonprofit developers funded by the city.
A listing of 25 homeownership counseling agencies is free for the asking from the Department of Housing and Community Development's Home Ownership Institute at 410-396-3124.
The many reputable members of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors and the Real Estate Brokers of Baltimore also stand ready to assist buyers.
But I take issue with The Sun's editorial "Real estate swindlers should be prosecuted" (Aug. 3), which charges that the city has been a "silent co-conspirator" in such scams.
The Department of Housing and Community Development has two representatives on the city-wide Coalition to End Predatory Real Estate Practices.
A focus of the coalition is educating housing counselors to spot and deter unscrupulous transactions.
But one of the difficulties we face is that most of the ways greedy speculators take advantage of poor and unsophisticated buyers, though cruel and immoral, are not illegal.
Buying low and selling high is not illegal.
Where actual criminal fraud is involved, prosecution falls to the state Attorney General's Office, not City Hall. Indeed, the Consumer Protection Division of the Attorney General's Office is currently investigating such real estate scams. It is also represented on the coalition.
The coalition is working to draft legislation for next year's Maryland General Assembly session that will address predatory mortgage lending practices and attempt to more strictly regulate real estate appraisers.
We are also working with federal and state governments to require that appraisers adhere to higher standards.
We believe that housing counselors (whose certification is often required for FHA-approved lenders to close a loan) should also meet a higher standard than many currently do.
I want to assure the public that, while the scams are real and too many people are affected, they have taken place in a small percentage of the 6,820 homes sales in Baltimore City in the past year.
In fact, with a 42 percent increase in home sales last year, Baltimore is the region's hottest area.
I also want to note that the scams have had very little impact on the city's incentive programs -- SELP, Housing Venture Fund, Live Near Your Work, City Employees Incentive Programs.
We are reviewing measures which would make it even more difficult to use our programs for fraudulent transactions.
This type of fraud is not new. It manifested itself in the fear-driven "blockbusting" practices of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as more recently in communities such as Belair-Edison, where investors were snatching homes owned by the elderly for prices well below their market value.
In those areas, we implemented an intervention-buying program that has now been expanded to several other neighborhoods.
The best way to fight back against real estate scams is by educating consumers. "Caveat emptor" (buyer beware) is the best advice for anyone purchasing property. To that timeless warning, I would also add, "If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is."
Unfortunately, some people get so caught up in the emotion of buying a house that common sense goes out the window.
But if, for instance, you have poor credit, but suddenly are being schmoozed into a mortgage, you should slow down and take stock of the situation.
Daniel P. Henson III
Baltimore
The writer is housing commissioner of the city of Baltimore.