Locals reflect on tragedy

Locals reflect on tragedy

Sept 15, 2001

CAROL WIELING of Cortez talks about Tuesday’s tragedy.

By Janelle Holden
Journal Staff Writer

Tuesday’s terrorist attacks have brought scenes of death and destruction into Montezuma County living rooms, giving residents and visitors time to reflect on the tragedy and how America should respond.

Carol Wieling and Roy Paul were discussing "the senselessness" of Tuesday’s attack at Magpie Coffeehouse in Cortez on Friday.

"Sitting in here Tuesday, I didn’t have any idea of what was going on until someone called me," explained Wieling, who owns the coffeehouse. "As people came in and shared their stories, I kind of heard it unfold from the mouths of people. I didn’t have any news contact."

On Wednesday morning, as Wieling helped her children prepare for school, she thought about the tragedy.

"I was thinking about all the kids in New York whose mom or dad was not there to get them ready for school that morning. They might not even know where mom or dad were, and in a lot of cases, mom and dad work in the same building. They might have had both parents there. That’s when it struck my heart, when I thought about the kids," said Wieling.

And like many people, Wieling wants to know why.

ROY PAUL of Montezuma County discusses the terrorist attacks while having coffee Friday morning at the Magpie Coffeehouse in Cortez.

"Why are they killing our innocent people? That’s what we have soldiers for, to fight those battles, but yet they’re taking our families and putting them out there and asking our families to fight their battles. And then why don’t they say who they are? If you’re going to do something like that, stand up, you know, stand up and take responsibility for it, that’s what I don’t understand," says Wieling.

"I think we need to find whoever is responsible and deal with those people personally. I don’t think it would be any more right of us to march into a country and kill their innocent people than it was for them to kill our innocent. We should deal with them directly."

Wieling’s son is one of America’s newest soldiers; he recently graduated from a Marine boot camp.

One veteran, Jim Ostler from Bluff, Utah, was in Cortez on Friday to look for an older American flag to fly.

"I come from sort of an anti-war part of Vietnam, even though I was in the military," said Ostler, who remembers "real ideological criminals" using the flag during Vietnam, "and so I appreciate seeing the flag used in this other way, where it’s just Americans flying it with other Americans."

Ostler has an ordered list of what America should do now.

"I think we need to take care of all the people who have been injured, that’s where the emphasis should go, helping them, and then reconstructing," said Ostler. Then he wants the U.S. to track down who is responsible, prevent further attacks, and "develop an understanding of why individuals and groups could harbor this kind of hatred against us, and then work to defuse that."

At the Mane Cuts Barber Shop, where men gather to get a shave and a haircut and talk, owner Leo Lewis reported that most of his customers have said the same thing this week — "It’s a terrible tragedy."

"Most people think that we’ll never know America again as we have in the past," said Lewis. "Most of them think that America needs a wake-up call, but not that severe of a wake-up call."

His customers worry that biological and chemical warfare will be the next attack, if "we don’t do something quick."

"We’re going to have to pay the price if we’re going to have freedom in this country," said Lewis.

Before the tragedy, Lewis pointed out, Congress displayed partisan politics, but now the tragedy has been "pulling everybody together to get behind the president and the country."

And Lewis’s connection to the tragedy? His nephew-in-law’s cousins work in the World Trade Center. One made it out; his wife did not.

Visiting Cortez are Richard and Dianne James from "just west of Cleveland, Ohio." They were in Estes Park when they heard the news.

"The first thing I wanted to do was go back home, that was my first reaction," Richard James explained, but the couple decided to continue their trip. They arrived in Cortez on Friday morning and ate breakfast at the El Grande cafe.

The Jameses think American leaders need to find and punish the terrorists. "Go after ’em," Richard James advised, "and if they move into another country that they’re not originally from, don’t stop."

One man said America will never be the same again.

"I think we’ve lost our innocence," he said, asking to remain anonymous. "Everything we’ve been built on, a lot of people want to take away."

He said his views are "probably pretty extreme," but, "I think we should probably give the Israeli Mossad free rein over there."

The Mossad hunted down and assassinated the terrorists who massacred Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics, and according to this man, "I think they are the most tactical people as far as retribution in the world. I believe that they have this vengeance, an eye for an eye, tooth for tooth, where they believe in doing it now and they don’t believe in waiting."

Other Biblical images were invoked across the country on Friday, as citizens gathered for a national day of prayer.

At the Presbyterian church at noon Friday, over 20 read from a litany praying, "O God, in such a moment of shock, we hardly know what to pray. And yet we know, in you alone will we find hope, comfort and strength."