FIND THE HELPERS

When I first started reading “Find the Helpers,” by Fred Guttenberg, I was unsure about what to expect. Because of an unthinkable tragedy, Fred has become a welcomed face and loud voice advocating common sense gun control. But before that happened, I knew his daughter Jaime and his wife Jennifer as regular customers in our dance store. Jaime loved to dance and she did something about it. She had dreams and dedication, a powerful combination.

We live in a small city next to Parkland, in Coral Springs, and the dance and entertainment community, despite its high profile, is always relatively small. Four fatal victims of the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas murders were or had been regular customers at our store. The father of one of our customers died in the tragedy too. A murdered boy was a close friend to one of our employees. We were hit hard, it was emotional and gut wrenching, but not as hard as for any of the survivor families. My father died unexpectedly from gun violence over thirty years ago. That is a phone call I wish upon no one to receive; it marks you for life. You learn to live with it, you never move on. And you know how it hits when it happens to others.

My wife and I have become closer to Jennifer and Fred since the tragedy and, as I said, I did not know what to expect from the book. It is a personal story of transformation. Fred takes us through the emotional bonds in his life, his failures and successes as an everyday American within a supportive family network. He shares his pain vividly as he tells us about an event that affected us all, 9/11, and how that monstrous attack’s toxic aftermath eventually led to the death of his younger brother, an iconic hero loved by his community of first responders.

-- BANG!!--

A single shot felled Jaime six minutes into the attack, seconds away from bending around a corner into safety. An instant that ended her life after minutes of terror which transformed the lives of many. A devastating blow to any loving family, to sixteen other families who lost a loved one; to another sixteen, those of the seventeen wounded (one family grieved one dead son, while tending their other one at the hospital); and of two others afterwards, suicides brought upon by their PTSD.  A blow changing the life of the thousands of students at MSD and to our cities of Parkland and Coral Springs.

Fred writes about how he picked up most of the pieces to find a new mission in life. From living a normal American life, he realized that our lives are all intertwined and that while the tragedy of 9/11 had brought changes to the way we live a far more deadly force, gun violence, is pervasive and no major regulatory effort is being undertaken to curb it. In fact, quite the contrary, the root of this violence is fed by a supposedly nonprofit civic organization that in reality is a powerful lobbying machine for gun and ammunition manufacturers.

The National Rifle Association is singularly responsible for successfully expanding the massive uncontrolled sale and distribution of guns and ammunition in the United States and, increasingly, abroad. The NRA has transformed the Second Amendment into a marketing slogan and, on every occasion they have, they stoke fears and animosity to urge people to buy more, buy more, buy more guns and bullets. That is their purpose: to be a commercial, highly profitable enterprise cloaking itself in an extreme interpretation of the Constitution. That is why they oppose any possible restrictive measure related to responsible gun ownership. They want to sell more.

At first a pained cynic, Fred finds in the receptivity to his message from the public, politicians and media, solace and support for his mission: “I’m going to break that fucking gun lobby”. He has found helpers. He almost surprises himself when this world actually listens to him and that many have the same goals as he does, confronting an inertia which can only be qualified as irresponsibly divisive and toxic. Fred pushes against that inertia, he is an advocate now.

Fred has made a journey through life that has shaped his mission. After deeply personal tragedies he found helpers out there. From a stranger on the street that called his family to let them know his brother was okay on 9/11, to a helper personified in the now President Elect, Joe Biden, comforting him by giving him a sense of purpose shortly after Jaime was brutally and senselessly murdered.

Fred wants us to know that when we are at our most distraught and downtrodden, there are helpers out there. If we open our eyes and ears we will see them, find them. And that from the deepest tragedies and downfalls we can rebuild and be part of our community, never forgetting, but with a new drive and purpose, becoming helpers too.

This deeply personal book has a message for us all and it is a message of love. We are better when we are together. Our communities thrive through our bonds with it, common kindness and common sense. We carry on our shoulders the love and spirit of those that have left us, driving us to build better todays for everyone and to fight against the forces trying to break us. As the love of Fred for Jaime drives him to spread this message of love throughout the world, our community and my family wants to let him know we love him and his family back. Thanks for all you do.

FIND THE HELPERS, 294 pp.
Fred Guttenberg
Mango Publishing, Coral Gables, 2020

Available through Orange Ribbons for Jaime

FOR OTHER WRITINGS ON GUN CONTROL BY CJ RANGEL GO TO: BESEIGED BY GUN VIOLENCE

MARCH 24th - March for Our Lives in Parkland

As I stood under the beautiful South Florida skies of Parkland, listening to the speeches from the stage, a thought crossed my mind. I cannot call these young people children. That was taken away from them. These are young women and young men whose childhood was ripped away in the aftermath of a little more than six minutes on February 14^th that would change their life forever; and they now have the will to change the world.

Our community is large and small at the same time. It is large enough to accommodate a certain quasi-urban transactional anonymity in our daily interaction. It is small enough that we are neighbors to each other. We are not a six-degrees kind of place, more like a one or two-degree community. As the owner of a small shop that struggles to earn its keep in the new world of e-commerce, I was deeply impacted by the tragedy in Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, two miles and a bit away from where I spend most of my waking hours. The moment I knew of it I feared the worst, which was soon realized. Four of the young fatal victims had been customers in our store, some with more frequency than others. The child of one of the staff members murdered had purchased her ballet slippers here some time ago, a little size 9.5 child shoe. Another fatal victim held a teenage job in the same plaza where we are located and he, as well as one of the critically injured, is from another sub-community close to me, the Venezuelan community.

The survivors have poured their hearts out to us over the last few weeks with harrowing tales of cowering in dark corners and stepping out through pools of blood. Parents told us of their anguish as they dropped everything and headed to meet their children. Our small community had gotten a lot smaller; and our community would now join the growing list of communities across the nation that have to live with the indelible scar of common tragedy. A list that should grow never again.

At the march on Saturday I met my UPS driver, whose daughter was in Washington, DC, as part of the student delegation of Parkland students. She saw one of her best friends die in her classroom; she now sings for her and for so many others. I met a long ago customer who said she could never forgive herself if she did not add her number to the thousands marching that day; her son is an alum from MSD; in her daughter’s middle school yearbook, chills went down their spine as they spotted the killer as a classmate. I met part of the dance team marching for one of their own, a beautiful young soul who had been coming to our store since age six and for whom my eyes swell up every time I see her name handwritten in happy letters in her many fun entries in our collection of guest books.  I heard voices in many accents, Spanish, English, Portuguese, others. I saw diversity, a black man next to me in refrain with the speakers, a woman in a hijab with her children, many Latinos, many, many, many so-called tattooed rednecks that you would cast type in a country western saloon. We were all marching as community. A community in grief, a community in force.

One of the speakers at the rally talked about unity and compromise. His daughter was one of the victims, one of those that walked the same floor I walk on every day; she would be looking for earrings, for tights in the right color. He wants a better world, but recognizes that it is a long path that must be shared by all. As I saw the crowd, there were attempts for political co-opting and divisiveness. If we are to succeed in the goal of making our schools, our movie theaters, our churches, our office parties, our restaurants, our concerts, our crowded streets, our country safe we must first acknowledge that we all bleed the same. Children of Republicans and children of Democrats and children of those who could care less, die often at the end of the barrel of a gun. More young people die yearly from gun violence than from car accidents. People of all ages, backgrounds, and affiliations succumb every day to gun violence; if we know tragedy can happen we must not stand still and do nothing if there is something we can do. We must at least speak out and be part of the conversation; we must surely vote.

When a combination of factors align in the worst of ways these tragedies occur. One of the best deterrents to a bad guy with a gun is making sure that the bad guy does not get a gun in the first place; if he gets a gun, it should not be a weapon of mass murder; and if he uses it, it should be difficult for him to wreak mayhem with it. Three factors that can be addressed in a bipartisan way without compromising our civil rights. The first two of these factors are opposed by those whose interest is ever increasing sales of their deadly wares. In the third, their answer is a greater amount of more powerful arms for everyone. Again, selling more deadly wares.

We must not confuse civil rights organizations with manufacturing associations. Civil rights organizations defend our constitution from abuses of power by the government or others. Civil rights organizations derive most of their funding from membership fees. Manufacturing associations have as their purpose to further the commercial interests of their members and derive most of their funding from fees and/or donations from the manufacturers whose interests are furthered by the association. The behavior and funding of the NRA parallels that of a manufacturing association while it claims to be a civil rights organization, purposefully distorting the meaning and intention of the second amendment and thus debasing the power of our constitution. The young men and women leading the gun regulation movement know this and are doing something about it. They know the straightforward, clear and unencumbered meaning of “well regulated.” They are the ones defending our constitution.

Photo: Carlos J. Rangel

FOR OTHER WRITINGS ON GUN CONTROL BY CJ RANGEL GO TO: BESEIGED BY GUN VIOLENCE