Crash survivor is living proof that seat belts save lives

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"19-year-old survives car crash" the headlines should have read, because his not dying miraculous. But it wasn't news. Surviving never is. People walk away from car crashes every day.

But Erickson shouldn't have. He fell asleep at the wheel while driving home from Boston on the VFW Parkway. His Toyota pickup truck careened over an embankment, ploughed into trees, spun around and landed back on the park-way facing the wrong direction. The truck is history. Erickson survived without a scratch.

People say he was lucky. But he was more than lucky. He was smart. He was wearing a seat belt. The seat belt saved his life.

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Bush was right: We must revive `family values'

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The phrase has taken a beating in the last few weeks.

Say the words, "family values" and your commercial value plummets. It's safer to be snide, easier to drag out Ozzie and Harriet and sneer, "Yah, but look what happened to them!" It's far more fashionable to denigrate the notion of family than to think about what family really is.

Family is not Ozzie and Harriet.

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They just want to save lives - seat belts

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All they want is to get their message to the public.

A cop called to the scene of a fatal car crash, who has to knock at yet another door and tell one more mother, father, husband, wife, that their loved one is dead, doesn't want to do this anymore, wouldn't have to do this with such frequency, if only people would wear seat belts.

His message is this: People don't have to die in car crashes. People don't have to be seriously injured.

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We are forgetting the true victims of Los Angeles

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Newsweek's cover story this week is about the riots in Los Angeles. There's a two-page picture-spread of the city's destroyed buildings. A couple of pages are dedicated to political analysis. There's a section on race and crime, a page about the ethnic diversity of L.A., a page about welfare, a page highlighting George Bush, another homing in on Peter Ueberroth and three pages which, in Newsweek's own words, offer a "close-up look at life and death on one city block."

Ending the piece, on the final page, is a list of the names and the races of the 54 men, women and children killed in the riots. At the top right corner there's a color photo of DeAndre Harrison, 17, dressed in a white suit, his hands folded in front of him, lying in his coffin.

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TV violence becomes the norm in '92

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It has been a long time since I awakened to the sounds of cartoons in my house. Years ago there was always a child up before me, roosting in front of the TV when I came downstairs, watching the "Smurfs" or "Gummy Bears" or some other early morning show.

These days my children sleep as late as they can and the TV remains silent. I haven't seen a cartoon in years.

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This division can't continue

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For a moment last Wednesday, possibility hung in the air - the possibility for change, for understanding.

You could feel it, like ozone before a storm.

America gasped - black, white America - and while the country held its breath, we were one nation, unified in our horror and outrage and despair.

Virtually no one who had seen the tape of Rodney King could understand how a jury could acquit the police officers who'd kept beating him when he was down. All of America was stunned. If reason had triumphed over rage, if marches had been opted for instead of mayhem, America might have stayed unified. A bridge might have been spanned.

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Cable offers new adventures in slime

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The station is WWOR, Channel 9, from New York, now delivered to us through our cable system.

It's not an x-rated station. We don't subscribe to it. It comes free with our basic package, and like most every other TV station, it's packed full of news and talk shows and re-runs.

Last Thursday at 7 a.m. the station showed "James Bond Jr.," followed by "Widget," "Head of the Class," "It's a Living," "Jenny Jones" and "Nine Broadcast Live."

Nine Broadcast Live is the subject of this column.

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Life full of `little' adjustments

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Let's see if I have this straight. This is how we must live our lives: We must never talk to strangers, must in fact, walk with our eyes down as if we are deep in thought, while we stride purposefully on our way. Purposefully is the key. We want our body to give out the message: don't mess with us. That's what the experts say.

We must walk on brightly lighted streets in groups, never alone in the dark. We must constantly be on guard. Is there someone behind us? Is that someone too close? Quick, cross the street and walk more purposefully. We must walk alone through parks or alleys or even sparse woods.

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It's time we all got involved

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The contrast is everywhere. It's in the newspapers, in the ads for designer clothes and expensive skin creams laid out right next to reports of American children who go to school hungry.

It's in the landscape, in the sagging tenements that line the edge of American highways, where shiny new cars with deluxe audio systems and cruise control speed indifferently past.

It's in our cities and our towns, people in dress coats walking next to people in rags; the privileged hurrying to the theater and to symphony, the underprivileged going nowhere that isn't free.

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Sexual Preference is not the issue

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The most gentle people I know are gay. A woman who lives with her mother, and takes care of her and anyone else who needs her. A man who lives alone but is never alone because he is always helping someone out. Two men who have been with each other for 17 years. Another man, who is 49, and still hasn't told his parents, because they're old and wouldn't understand and he doesn't want to break their hearts.

The most disgusting people I've seen are gay. Two men having sex with each other in front of a crowd at Mardi Gras last year. Gays throwing condoms at priests' mothers at the priest's ordinations a year before that. Gays defiling the Eucharist at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

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Divorce, Sesame Street style

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The saddest story in the news last Friday had nothing to do with crime or politics or the economy. It had to do with the way we live our lives, and the way we treat our children. It was a heartbreaker, yet relegated to the back pages, as if it meant nothing at all.

Sesame Street announced that it was putting its new episode about divorce on hold because the preschool children who had previewed it had become upset and had found it too painful to watch. The Snuffleupaguses were splitting up and the kids didn't like it a bit.

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Beware of evil, but be aware of the good in life

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There it is. On my bulletin board. Someone sent it to me. The rules for life. "Share everything. Play fair. Put things back where you found them. Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody. Flush."

I always smile when I read this. Most days I marvel at the wisdom in such brevity. But today I think they were rules for a gentler time.

A woman tells me that her father began sexually abusing her when she was 11 years old.

"Do you mind?" he asked her.

"You're my father," she said.

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American dream needs a new look

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The Boston Herald

February 28, 1992

BEVERLY BECKHAM

Newsweek's cover story this week is titled "America's Lost Dream" yet it isn't about a lost dream at all.

It's about a dream come true, about a country that grabbed for the gold ring and got it, that got everything it ever wanted, and then some, and now must decide what it wants next.

Since the end of World War II, life in America has improved in countless ways. Jet travel, air conditioning, interstate highways, direct long-distance dialing, television, automatic washers and dryers, antibiotics - all these things have made our lives more comfortable.

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Gun lovers blind to consequences

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Nine days ago, Jim Brady, the former White House press secretary who was shot in the head and left permanently disabled by an assassin's bullet intended for President Reagan, was booed off the stage at the University of Nevada by opponents of gun control.

He and his wife, Sarah, had traveled to the school to give a speech in support of gun control. The pair have dedicated their lives to this effort, trying to talk sense into people who look at Jim Brady and think, "poor guy; but that could never happen to me."

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Judge teaches kids some slay victims deserve their fate

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In the movies you root for the underdog. You enjoy seeing the bully put down. When Superman comes back to the diner after he has regained his super strength, and punches the man who pummeled and humiliated him when he was just a man, not Superman, you cheer. When the hobbled and shackled writer Paul Sheldon calls his No. 1 torturer Annie Wilkes "sick' and "twisted," then stuffs paper in her mouth and drops a typewriter on her head, you applaud.

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Real life won't let you `get organized'

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An article that ran in this paper last Sunday confirmed what I have long suspected: that it is impossible to keep up with life. That in the end the dust motes, empty soda cans and old newspapers win and all the sweeping, filing, sorting, labeling and chronicling we do in the name of order are a total waste of time. The headline stated just the opposite, of course: "Getting Organized Isn't Impossible." But after reading the stuff underneath, I'm convinced that…

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Race: It still divides people

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There's Michael Jackson doing his best, singing his heart out, spreading the message that skin color is superfluous, that people are people and "it don't matter if you're black or white."

And it doesn't. That's what most of us start out believing. There are exceptions, of course. Some people teach their children from the day they are born to hate anyone who's different from them. But this isn't about these people. This is about people whose hate is new, whose hate makes them uncomfortable, but whose feelings are born of frustration, anger and fear.

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Once, getting-to-know-you came first

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They told me I wouldn't like the movie. Too corny, the 21-year-old said. Too predictable, the 15-year-old added.

They had been disappointed so I assumed I would be, too. But I wasn't. I loved "Forever Young." It was a trip into yesterday, a love story, not a sex story, corny and predictable, yes, but who cares? It was tender instead of lewd. Imagine that in the 1990s!

Prior to the movie, I'd overheard a conversation. A girl, no more than 20, home from college for Christmas, was telling some friends about a guy she'd picked up at a New Year's Eve party. They were strangers who met around 11 p.m. and were bed partners a few hours later.

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Senseless hate is the saddest irony of all

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She used to live with them. They took her in when no one else would. She'd been staying with her mother, but the mother, one morning, looked across the kitchen table at this pregnant daughter and her young husband and said, "Go. I don't want you here anymore. Find someplace else to live." And so the couple packed their belongings, left the house, bought a newspaper, sat in the library and pored over the apartment-for-rent ads. They phoned a few, but got no results. They didn't have money for a down-payment; they had no collateral except themselves.

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