I am an attorney and aspiring writer today, but I was once a grunt in a Humvee barreling down Route Irish in south Baghdad. Fifteen years ago, I mourned a man I never met, got back to the base, and tried to forget about it. Below is what I began writing one night in 2007 when I couldn't sleep and couldn't forget about it. When I was in Mrs. Riner's junior English class at MacArthur High School, we were required to read John Cheever's The Enormous Radio. The premise was simple. A couple in the 1930s were given a special radio that allowed them to hear all their neighbors' conversations. At first they were elated, but, ultimately, they were haunted by the miracle of their ability. They could hear all the horrors of society that usually go unnoticed or are covered up and sterilized . . . and they couldn't turn it off. They couldn't change the channel. Like most high school boys, I soon forgot both the story and the assignment. But seven years later I felt that couple's horror and instantly remembered The Enormous Radio. It is not the best writing I've ever produced, and I like to think I've grown as a writer since then. It still encapsulates what that day was like, though.
Two or three years after I published the original blog post, SGT King's widow contacted me. She had searched her husband's name and found my story. My heart sank. I never wanted his family to read that, to feel that, but that is the risk we take when we share others' stories. SGT King's widow was grateful I wrote about her husband, that someone cared about his death, but it could easily have gone the other way. How would I feel if someone wrote a second-by-second story stitched together from the 911 calls on the day I lost my brother, niece, nephew, and de facto sister-in-law? I don't know. I keep that experience in mind when I consider how to tell the story of the Babbs Switch fire and ensuing mystery. These are people with loved ones. They did not ask to be public figures, and it would cause great pain to those loved ones for someone to misrepresent the people they knew. It is a great responsibility to tell others' stories, and I hope I am up to the task.
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