Adam's blogbox: on our ignoble loss of nobility, and the Amish

What is nobility? It's a question one may well ask, now that America has sunk to a nation whose Congress passes a bill that allows our President to decide whom and how to torture.

I write this because this morning I was reminded of two noble people. One was a young man of 22 in the Vietnam War, Dan Fernandez. A grenade was flung at his company, and he flung himself upon it to protect his fellow soldiers, shouting at them "Move out!" The grenade went off, and as he lay dying, he spoke to his comrades whose lives he had saved by smothering the impact of the grenade with his body. "Sorry guys, you won't have Danny to look after you now," he said. "You'll have to do it yourselves, because old Danny just has to go." And then he died. He was still thinking of their welfare, and worrying about how they would make out without his leadership, when he died.

The other noble person was a 13-year-old Amish girl. When the killer at their school last week told the Amish girls he was tying up that he was angry with God, and they should pray for him, this 13-year-old said, "Shoot me, and leave the others alone."

When I think of our nation, and especially our elected representatives, and how the Republicans are finger-pointing at each other over who should've intervened in Mark Foley's page-stalking, I see not a shred of nobility. It seems there isn't a politician alive who could ever be found guilty of nobility.

And this makes me immensely sad. Our leaders aren't noble. It could be our fault: we don't seem to pick them for their nobility, and in return, they don't ever think of appealing to our nobility either, but to our most base desires. It is, for example, a policy of the Republican Party to appeal to the gay-hating tendencies of their voters. Politics appear to be a conspiracy of the most base and ugly.

Yet I'm still immensely proud of being part of the human race, because there lived a young Amish girl in America today, who was willing to offer up her life so her friends may live. Her name was Marian Fisher. Hallowed be her name.


Amish girl reportedly told killer: "Shoot me" -- by The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Associated Press

GEORGETOWN, Pa. -- A 13-year-old Amish girl killed by a schoolhouse gunman asked to be shot first in an attempt to buy time for the younger students, according to accounts that surfaced Friday.

The girl's 11-year-old sister then reportedly said, "Shoot me next."

Two survivors of the shooting told their parents that Marian Fisher asked to be shot first, apparently hoping the younger girls would be let go, according to Leroy Zook, an Amish dairy farmer.

"Shoot me and leave the other ones loose," Marian has been quoted as saying, Zook said. His daughter, Emma Mae Zook, was the teacher who ran from the schoolhouse to a farm to summon police.

Amish builder David Lapp said Marian's sister, Barbie, who is recovering from gunshot wounds in her shoulder, hand and leg, provided one of the accounts from her bed at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

"Her sister remembers it," Lapp said.

Trooper Linette Quinn said investigators have not conducted any interview that confirms the story but also said the investigation into the deadly assault Monday at the one-room schoolhouse is incomplete.

It was not known if Fisher was shot first.

Parents of two survivors also told Leroy Zook that the children questioned the gunman after the adults left.

"They just asked him why he's doing this. He said he's angry with God," Zook said.

Another account of what occurred inside the West Nickel Mines Amish School was related by Rita Rhodes, a Mennonite nurse-midwife who had delivered Marian Fisher, who was buried Thursday.

Marian had been bound with the other children in the school. "They were already tied up; they knew they were going to be shot," Rhodes said, and "Barbie says that Marian said she'd be first. And then Barbie said, 'Shoot me next.' ...

"I think it was just an amazing display of courage. God really had to be present in that schoolhouse to give them that courage," said Rhodes, who had told the story to ABC News and others.

She said she heard about what happened from Ruben Fisher, the girls' grandfather, and Leroy Zook.

"Barbie said somewhere during all the conversations" in the one-room schoolhouse, the gunman "asked the girls to pray for him," said Rhodes, of nearby Quarryville, Pa.

"He said he hated God, but yet he must have realized that God was going to decide his future, and that the girls had a link to God. So he asked them to pray for him."

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, took 10 girls, ages 6 to 13, hostage Monday, tied them up and shot them, killing five, before killing himself at the one-room schoolhouse at Nickel Mines, about 60 miles west of Philadelphia.

Roberts, a local non-Amish milk-truck driver, had allowed boys and adults to leave before shooting the girls, police said.

Five girls remain hospitalized.

The accounts of young courage came as another victim was buried Friday. More than 40 buggies splashed along country roads behind a funeral-home car, two mounted state troopers and a carriage with the body of Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, in a hand-sawn wooden coffin.

Four other girls killed during Monday's shootings, two of them sisters, were buried Thursday at the same hilltop graveyard.

Also Friday, a victim who was taken off life support and brought home to die in the past two days continued to breathe on her own, according to Daniel Esh, 57, an Amish artist.

The 6-year-old girl, whom he identified as Rosanna King, was returned to Hershey Medical Center for further treatment, Esh said Friday. He said he learned the information from other members of the Amish community. He also heard that the child was able to squeeze a relative's hand.


2. Killer's wife is invited guest at first Amish funeral -- by BARRY WIGMORE (from the Daily Mail)

In a ceremony made more heartbreaking by its centuries-old simplicity, four little girls were buried yesterday as the Amish of Pennsylvania turned the other cheek.

With television and newspaper cameras kept at a distance, and police helicopters enforcing a no-fly zone overhead, one of the few non-Amish guests invited to the funeral of seven-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersole, the first little girl to be buried, was Marie Roberts, the killer's wife.

With tears in her eyes, Mrs Roberts sat in the back of one of the 34 black horse-drawn carriages that were part of the funeral cortege behind Naomi's horse-drawn hearse.

On the way from the church to the hilltop cemetary, the procession passed Mrs Roberts' home where her husband, Charles, loaded up his guns before heading for the little village school on Monday.

As usual in times of crisis, the deeply-religious villagers of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, turned inwards for support yesterday with prayers before, during and after each of the three ceremonies.

Like the other three children who were buried - the oldest, Marian Fisher, 13; and sisters Mary Liz Miller, eight, and Lena Miller, seven - Naomi was laid to rest in a simple wooden casket, narrow at the head and feet and wider in the middle.

All the children were dressed in a traditional white burial gown with a cape and a white prayer-covering on the head.

Each ceremony was attended by around 500 mourners. Services were also held throughout the day for non-Amish mourners at a church in the nearby town of Correyville.

The funeral of a fifth girl, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, is being held on Friday.

As Marian Fisher was buried yesterday, it was revealed that she had bravely begged Roberts to kill her, but release the other children he held at gunpoint.

Leroy Zook, had seven close relatives in the school when Roberts broke in: his wife, two daughters - one of them the teacher - two daughters-in-law, and two baby grandchildren. All escaped unharmed.

Standing in the drive of his family farm, Mr Zook, wearing braces and a straw hat with a black paper band around the brim, said: `The oldest girl there, Marian, she said, "Shoot me, and leave the others alone." But he ignored her.'

Mr Zook was among the many Amish villagers who also rallied behind Mrs Roberts and her three children. Within hours of the shootings, it emerged yesterday that a neighbour knocked on the Roberts family's door to pray for them and extend forgiveness.

Another neighbour, Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the attack, said: `I hope they stay around here. They'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support.'

Community leaders said that Mrs Roberts and her children may even receive money from a fund established to help victims and their families.

Although the Amish do not usually accept help from outside their community, even shunning social security payments, Kevin King, executive director of Mennonite Disaster Services, an agency managing the hundreds of thousands of dollars already sent in, quoted an Amish bishop: `We are not asking for funds.

In fact, it's wrong for us to ask. But we will accept them with humility.'

Meanwhile, police said the truth about the reason for Roberts' mad rampage probably died with him. In a brief phone call to his wife seconds before opening fire on his victims and then killing himself, Roberts said he was tortured by memories of how he had molsted two girls, aged four or five, 20 years ago when he was 12.

But the girls, now in their mid-20s, told police they were 'absolutely sure' that he had NOT molested them.

State police spokeswoman Linette Quinn said: `We will continue to investigate and try to determine what other motive there may have been.' Also yesterday, a six-year-old girl, one of the five critically-injured survivors of the attack, was taken off life-support after her family was told she was brain-dead.

Dr Holmes Morton, who runs a clinic for Amish children, said the girl's family wanted to take her home to allow her to die in peace, surrounded by her loved ones.

Dr Morton said: `These families want to be left alone in their grief and we ought to respect that.'

Author Gertrude Huntington, who has written a book about Amish children, said: ‘The people know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent. And they know that they will join them in death. The hurt is very great. But they don't mix hurt with hate.'