Lead By Example

A fine-boned young woman in a simple lavender raincoat, her backbone straight, her stride measured, the baby she carries a soft bulge in her thin profile, walks alone through the doorway of a United Air Lines jetliner bound from Newark to San Francisco.

A phalanx of well-dressed middle-aged men, bunched together in front of a bank of microphones, the U.S. Capitol dome silhouetted in the background, justify in somber tones why they are bugging out of their congressional offices.

One of these TV images was cause for national pride, the other for national chagrin.

Lisa Beamer is the young woman in the raincoat. To many of us who have watched her transformed by terrorism from private citizen to public heroine since Sept. 11, she's come to epitomize grace under pressure and the very best qualities of our national character. She's now as well known as her husband, Todd, who became a hero when he and a group of passengers apparently stormed the cockpit of United Flight 93 and foiled hijackers possibly intending to fly the plane into either the White House or the U.S. Capitol building.

Todd Beamer and 43 others died when United Flight 93 crashed into a field in Pennsylvania.

By taking to the sky again to complete the flight her husband never finished, Mrs. Beamer said she wanted "to show people it's safe to get back on an airplane. We can't let ourselves be held captive by terrorism. It's time to get back to life."

Too many members of Congress don't understand that.
The same day Mrs. Beamer -- the mother of two sons, ages 3 and 1, with another child due in January - flew across the country, the House of Representatives shut itself down out of fear.

A letter sent to Sen. Tom Daschle's office, from Trenton, N.J., contained anthrax spores that infected several staff members. Hours later, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and Democratic leader Richard Gephardt announced the House shutdown to protect their office staffs. The Senate, which initially indicated it, too, would close, remained in session.

The congressional stampede from the Capitol prompted a "WHIMPS!" headline in the New York Post and gave late-night talk show hosts fodder for a month.

But the House's cut-and-run wasn't funny. Lisa Beamer's singular act of individual courage was in sharp contrast to much of Congress' collective lack of guts. If lawmakers were so concerned about their employees, why didn't they send them home and answer their own phones? Open their own mail? Talk directly to their constituents?

 Pampered and privileged, out of touch with the people who pay them, lawmakers surely would have benefited from some one-on-one contact with their constituents.
These are the same people who send young Americans to fight and die in the name of democracy and freedom. How can they pose as leaders if they behave like lemmings -- or chickens?

The most famous line from Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1932 inaugural speech is, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."
But as an elected servant of the people, he also said: "For the trust reposed in me I will return the courage and the devotion that befit the time. I can do no less."

If Hastert, Gephardt, or any other member of Congress needs an image to inspire them through these scary days, they should put a picture of the Widow Beamer in a prominent place on their desks. It's her kind of dignity and courage that will lead Americans out of this valley of the shadow.

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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