Posted on 03/19/2003 5:48:54 PM PST by MarMema
Craig and Cindy Corrie spent yesterday in Washington, D.C., demanding lawmakers begin a U.S.-led investigation into the death of their youngest daughter, Rachel.
It's a shift for them to take up a cause, Craig Corrie said. It was Rachel who was always so socially and politically conscious. She was the family's activist.
"We learned from her," said Corrie, an insurance actuary who with his wife raised three children in Olympia.
On Sunday, the world first learned of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American killed by an Israeli military bulldozer in the Gaza Strip as she sought to stop the demolition of a Palestinian house. Her death was called an accident by Israeli officials, who said they would investigate.
But that isn't enough for her family, said her father, who told lawmakers the investigation should be handled by the FBI or State Department, and not left to the Israeli government.
"We want them to be our eyes and ears since Rachel can't," said Craig Corrie, now forced to think about how his daughter lived and died.
As the youngest, she was precocious, inquisitive and articulate. She was raised in a rural neighborhood outside Olympia called Mud Bay, in a house with chickens, rabbits, a cat and a dog.
She was concerned and compassionate about the world around her, her family said. Some of that came from attending an alternative elementary school the Corries helped found in the 1980s. The school's core curriculum focuses on the environment, social justice and peace.
As a fifth-grader at Options School, she and her classmates held a news conference on the state Capitol steps to call attention to world hunger. As a high-school student, she helped foreign-exchange students learn about America, and even spent six weeks in Russia.
In college, she was working with the homeless, staffing a suicide hotline and, given her affinity for art, she once helped outfit children and adults as doves to march in an annual "Procession of the Species" parade.
"My family always encouraged her to support her own beliefs and to think about her place in the community," said her brother, Chris Corrie, of Falls Church, Va. "Rachel was never into herself. It was just the opposite. In some ways, I think she was almost embarrassed about the things she had. She always felt she could find a better use for money."
Slim and blond, Corrie had a gentle, soft presence, her first-grade teacher, as well as faculty at The Evergreen State College, recalled. She was an avid writer, keeping journals from a young age. "She came with a deep set of convictions about the world and what needed to be changed," said Lin Nelson of the Evergreen faculty.
Spoke to schoolchildren
Before she left for Israel in January, Corrie spoke about her trip at her elementary school and collected the children's letters that she planned to deliver to Palestinian youngsters. She had wanted to start up a pen-pal project, as well a sister-city program.
Options School held an assembly yesterday in her memory.
Corrie also worked at Olympia's Behavioral Health Resources, a counseling center. As a young woman who had grown up in Olympia, friends say she was widely known in town because she had her hand in so many political groups, including one that opposed an Iraq war and another seeking a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"If you were paying attention, you knew who she was," said Peter Dorman, an Evergreen economics teacher.
She was especially drawn toward peace activism, friends added, after Sept. 11, 2001. Then, as the war with Iraq loomed, college faculty members and friends said, Corrie decided to go to Israel.
She felt a war in the Persian Gulf would only escalate the violence directed at the Palestinians. Friends introduced her to the International Solidarity Movement, said Phan Nguyen, a two-time volunteer.
The movement calls itself a Palestinian-led group that uses nonviolent acts to challenge the Israeli government.
In the absence of any international peacekeeping force in Israel and the disputed territories, according to Amnesty International, the movement is "on the ground and reporting back."
"The work that they do, really, no one else is doing," said Amnesty's Marty Rosenbluth. "They will ride in ambulances with Palestinian patients that need to get to the hospital. They'll travel with people who need routine medical care."
A friend of Corrie's from Olympia was headed to Rafah, in the Gaza Strip, Nguyen said. Corrie wanted to follow him there, instead of going to the West Bank, because violence in Gaza is often overlooked in media reports, he added.
For nearly two months, Corrie was stunned by the level of everyday violence and in awe of Palestinians trying to live ordinary lives, which she chronicled in
e-mail to friends and family.
Pictures show her with a bullhorn, standing in front of an Israeli bulldozer intent on razing a Palestinian house. In another, more incendiary photo, she looks angry, wearing a head scarf, holding up a burning paper U.S. flag.
That photo, said her brother Chris, does not adequately explain who his sister really was.
"I think she was so emotionally charged because she was seeing weapons used on children. I think there's a value in not judging someone on one moment but rather on the thoughts they can articulate when they really think about things."
Due to graduate this year
Corrie, who would have graduated this year, hinted about living abroad after graduation, perhaps teaching English.
"People have speculated that if she knew the outcome, would she have gone?" her brother said. "I think she probably would have."
"Before she left," said her dad, "she said she was frightened. I told her, 'You don't have to go. You could change your mind.' She said, 'No, I have to do this. I'm very frightened but I'll be able to do it.' "
2. Look at the pictures of the parents. They look like siblings.
Damn, that's the first pang of sympathy I've felt for the pancake. She's been brainwashed by the looniest of the loony left for her entire life. It could only ever end thus.
Why unbelievable? Seems like good sound policy to me.
Maybe it would provide a dose of reality - a realization that their daughter's life was cut short because she dared to assume that those involved in violent conflict would be sure to keep her out of harm's way.
I would hope her parents feel the same way a father felt after his son died trying to immitate a stunt he saw on the MTV show "Jackass". A hollow feeling of a wasted life spent tempting fate and losing.
I do have sympathy for the parents because they've lost someone dear to them but that doesn't change the reality that she needlessly dared a military vehicle to a game of "chicken" (or possibly "Jackass") and lost.
Reality can be a cruel thing and liberals who live in their self-created fairy-lands are likely victims when they have to confront reality.
Did you ask yourself what purpose is served by burning a replica of an American flag before Palestinian children? If the alleged goal of her trip was to find a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (as the article purports), she found a very strange way of advocating peace. It would seem the only purpose of her flag-burning was to teach Palestinians to hate America, which is something they really don't lack without us sending "peaceniks" like this one. They're already taught a lot of home-grown hate without us exporting it to them.
Nope. Sorry. You defend her. I can't.
Your daughter went to a place she had no good business being and like a fricking retarded oppossum, stepped in front of a bulldozer & let it run her over.
You have so much to be proud of...She was such a "bright" girl.
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