Published: February 17, 2009 04:35 pm      

RANDOM THOUGHTS: "Random" still can have purpose

Today’s column is truly created by random thoughts. Random is defined as having no specific pattern or objective. The actions of the two subjects I write about happened randomly. Both I encountered years ago but in the past several weeks they have become newsworthy once again.

In 1969 I interviewed a minister who had served as a chaplain during WWII. He volunteered in May 1942 and spent 18 months in England training for the invasion. He had learned shortly before our interview that he was the first American chaplain to land on the beach on D-Day. He went in with the second wave, H-hour plus 30 minutes and although wounded in the leg by enemy fire he went back in the water to save a soldier caught in the undercurrent. He received the Silver Star for gallantry in action against the enemy in Normandy, France. Following the war he stayed in the Ohio National Guard as division chaplain of the 37th Infantry Division for 21 years, retiring in 1968.

Although the story I wrote was mainly on the D-Day events, Chaplain Reed told about the days in England as the invasion forces waited behind barbed wire. He said he was acutely aware of the mounting tension in the men. Hardly a day passed that he was not called to counsel a soldier who had attempted suicide, or worse, to bury one who had succeeded. His memories of the landing were sad and horrific but that short bit of information about suicides stuck in my brain.

When the headlines started appearing recently on the number of suicides in the Army rising I remembered that interview. Record-keeping on suicides did not begin until 1980 which means WWII suicides cannot be compared with the numbers today. But today those random acts are not hidden but the reasons are being examined and solutions are being discussed.

The second case was what in today’s television news would be called “breaking news.” I had traveled to Minneapolis, MN to attend the fall board meeting of the National Federation of Press Women in 1982. The speaker for October 1 was a public relations employee for Johnson & Johnson. Just before she was introduced she was called to the phone and when she returned it was clear she was upset. Instead of a talk she apologized and said she must leave immediately because of an emergency in her office.

The unexplained emergency unraveled over the next few days. It began with the death of a person in Chicago on September 29. By the time it was confirmed that death was caused by cyanide-laced Tylenol, over the next two days six more deaths were attributed to the same cause. It was then we realized what a nightmare public relations problem had hit our speaker.

Even though a suspect was found he served more than 12 years in prison, not for the deaths but for sending extortion notes to Johnson & Johnson. Now after 26 years the FBI is investigating new leads in the case.

Because of those deaths by the deliberate contamination of the popular pain relief pill tamper-proof packaging appeared. Today many of us struggle to open boxes and bottles protected from anyone intent on harming us. The extra effort is worth it but more and more we must question if what was put in the container before it was sealed securely was free of contamination. Today it is peanut butter.

If random actions have no specific pattern or objective they certainly have a negative effect on many lives.