King A Reminder To Get Involved
The child will close her eyes and picture a great wall of water pouring through Spokane. So much water that you could hear it coming a half hour before it reached Spokane. So much water that boulders the size of houses floated on it. The child will close her eyes and understand the rich geological history, the great floods, that formed Spokane in prehistoric time.
The child will read about the floods in a new book called “Our City … Spokane.” But she will never know that one man’s love of Spokane and love of children helped make the book a reality. Rick Scammell, banker, businessman, community volunteer, died shortly after the book was published. He died quickly of cancer and he died too young.
At 47, his work was making the lives of many people much better. His financial and emotional support of the book was just one project among many.
“This has turned out to be Rick’s legacy to the children of Spokane,” said Marcia O’Neill Schrapps, the book’s co-author. “There were times when he was the only one who thought this was a good idea.”
Today - Martin Luther King Day - is a time to think of legacies. It is a day to look to people like Scammell, like King, who were not afraid to jump into community life. Not afraid to wade into the mess of life and hope and dream and struggle and show that big, good things can happen.
Today, in Washington D.C., a president will be inaugurated.
There will be much celebration around public life, something not celebrated much anymore. For complicated reasons (and the media is part of this) public life is in disrepute. Cynicism blankets government institutions and those who serve in them.
Author James Hillman worries that we have lost forever the notion that a balanced life includes being active in civic affairs. He said recently: “That was the Roman ideal and an American ideal. In the Old South, that was the highest ideal, to be a public servant. (Now) it’s almost disgraceful to run for office.”
Not everyone can run for office, of course. Or become a leader of history like King. Or even possess the energy and the vision of Rick Scammell.
But on this day, we can reflect on our own civic and community involvement. And vow to do a bit more in 1997. Vow to commit an act of civic participation.
Register to vote, if you haven’t. Help an 18-year-old register to vote. Volunteer in a community-policing cop shop. March today in the Public Unity March which begins at 10 a.m. in front of the Catholic Diocese building, 1023 W. Riverside, in downtown Spokane.
Cynicism is the easy way. It is, as one writer said lately, “a failure of imagination.” Civic life is not easy. It can move slowly. Projects begun can never end. Citizens disagree with one another. You won’t always get your way. Nor see an immediate reward to hard work.
King, who was beaten, stabbed, jailed, never lived to see the rallying point for human rights his holiday has become. Scammell will never meet the third-graders who learn about their community’s history through the book he nurtured.
But their legacies live on. And provide noble examples for the rest of us.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Rebecca Nappi/For the editorial board