Be the miracle

To the editor:

I have read with interest the editor’s opinion on Nov. 22 concerning how Marion might reshape its government after the failure of democracy in this small town and Roger Maag’s letter about rebuilding law enforcement in Marion.

As a result of national coverage, many are watching how you will rebuild your government. 

My family homesteaded about 1840 in southeast Iowa. The determination, integrity, and honesty we inherited from those family roots in a small town is what we now draw on to raise future generations.

I live near Philadelphia now, and I subscribed to your newspaper when I read the horrific stories about the unlawful entry and seizure of newspaper equipment and the subsequent hampering of newspaper production months ago. It was a true breakdown of democracy.

I have continued to read the news from your small town weekly and I share it with friends and people in our area as we watch you work through the difficulties created over the years — difficulties so carefully described in the Nov. 22 issue.

I’ve always looked upon small towns in America as being the bastion of democracy and integrity.

We have drawn our strength in building this country from generations of farmers who represent the mantra of hard work.

My family sent my uncle, a Marine, to Iwo Jima. My grandfather, then president of the only bank in our small town, used his own savings to stop a run on the bank during the Depression. Our family, the only pharmacists in town, became the medical resource during the epidemic of 1914 as all doctors and nurses had been shipped off to Army hospitals.

This is the level of integrity, honesty, and leadership that is home grown in America. We derive our strength from small towns like yours.

So, we all across America are watching as you struggle with difficult choices in rebuilding integrity, honesty, and kindness in your city’s administration.

You need not be the laughingstock of the world. You can be the miracle that we need.

And as you do it, so can we all. May that lovely mother of Eric Meyer not have died in vain as a result of the police forcibly intruding into her home to search, unlawfully, for newspaper-related computers.

Lynn Hitschler
Villanova, Pennsylvania