Letters to the editor
Posted on Sunday, May 11, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/nwat/Editorial/65074/
Angels on earth
May 11, 2008 begins the annual celebration of National Nursing Home week.
With 237 nursing homes in the state and 11 in Washington County, it’s likely everyone knows or has known someone living in a nursing home.
Please take a minute this morning to give thanks for these facilities and the people that work in them. While most of us want to care for our loved ones at home, sometimes it’s just not feasible for one reason or another.
Resolve to visit a nursing home this week and ask if you could visit with an elder for a while, or just sit and hold their hand for a few minutes. You’d be doing yourself a favor.
I believe anyone working in a nursing home caring for our elders is earning their place in heaven. Where else can you go and walk among angels ?
Deanna Shackelford
Administrator, Springdale Health and Rehabilitation Center
Springdale
Our schools ought to be off-limits
One of the basic moral and legal principles in our American society is that children should never have to suffer punishment for the actions of their parents. Recently that principle was tragically violated at a local Springdale grade school. Last month, while waiting in line to pick up their daughter at Turnbow Elementary School, and in full view of parents and school children, the parents of an elementary child and her two middle school brothers were removed from their car, handcuffed, arrested and taken into custody by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE ) officers.
The father was arrested on a warrant for identity theft and was later charged and incarcerated. The mother was taken in on “ immigration” charges and was held overnight. The three children, who had just completed an ordinary school day just trying to learn their ABC’s, were forcibly separated from their parents and essentially left parentless. The frightened and distraught children spent the night in the home of strangers, not understanding what had happened to their mommy and daddy and not knowing when or if they would ever see them again.
I’m not writing to defend the parent’s illegal status in this country or to debate our evolving and often confusing immigration laws, but to address the heart wrenching scene of these children being separated from their parents in one of the places that kids and parents must consider “ safe” — the children’s school. Not only were these particular children affected by parental arrest at a time of high volume school traffic, but other children were also traumatized by the site of some “ mommies and daddies being taken away from their kids. ”
I’m not faulting our officers for doing their jobs, but unless they were trying to subdue a gun-toting terrorist, why did the arrests have to take place in the driveway of the school ? Couldn’t the officials have waited until the family had driven away from the school zone ? I agree that identity theft and violating immigration laws is a crime that must be addressed, but what I question is HOW it was addressed.
I’m not a psychologist, but it doesn’t take much common sense to understand that kids are going to be adversely affected, traumatized and become afraid to go to school if they see this perceived “ safe haven” turned into a place where unsuspecting parents are an easy target. In a country where approximately 5 million children have at least one undocumented parent, our society as a whole will suffer if children become afraid of what might happen at school and parents become afraid to take the chance of sending their children to school. If the practice of immigration arrests at school continues, we run the risk of raising a generation of illiterate and marginally functioning citizens (many of these affected children are actually U. S. citizens ). Regardless of our personal views on immigration, why do our least ones have to pay the highest price ?
Cindy Shaw
Springdale
Light rail is a fool’s dream
Forget light rail. We have it in Dallas and it doesn’t solve anything. The times I have tried to use it I found it was cheaper to drive, and it took five times longer to get where I wanted to go (than using a car ). My best advice is to build wide highways now. Also, forget the diamond lanes. People start cheating and you can’t keep up with traffic tickets. Rail or subway works pretty well in New York or London or Paris, but you have to walk forever to get to a rail point. Then as you go rural rail is even more inaccessible. Americans and Northwest Arkansas people need cars. Don’t get duped into thinking that rail is any kind of answer because it isn’t. The west bypass around Little Rock is the best thinking Arkansas ever did on highways. It still handles traffic well after decades. Follow the lead.
Michael Luckenbill
Irving, Texas