We are all to blame for death of Samore

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I'm looking for someone to blame. If I can blame someone or something, then I can put the death of 13-year-old Samore Vassel out of my head and get on with the pretense that life is manageable, and we can keep the wolves from our doors.

Samore Vassel lived in Dorchester with his father and younger brother and sister. Last week he was in Brooklyn, visiting his mother, when he was shot and killed. The boy had told his mother he was going to a movie with a friend. But he and his buddy went off to meet a couple of girls instead.

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Mother Teresa: Her message is love

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Mother Teresa: Her message is love

I think of it as myth, now, as a fairy tale I once believed. Truth has been downsized to fit a package I can carry around with me. The whole truth grew too heavy and cumbersome with age. The whole truth demanded a responsibility I continue to shun.

But I remember the child who accepted the whole truth, the child I was, who knew that life on Earth was only a test, that Heaven was the reward, not anything we might win here on Earth, and that the sole purpose of existence was to love God in this world and be happy with Him in the next.

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Capital meanness claims a victim

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It has been weeks now since Vincent Foster, President Clinton's boyhood friend, put a loaded gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

His death rocked Washington.

Few could believe, or wanted to believe, that every-day life in the nation's capital could be so mean-spirited that it would drive a man to suicide.

And so the news stories were speculative, rife with unanswered questions.

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Is that a demon? No, just a little boy

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I have never seen him, the child who lives upstairs. I heard him for the first time the morning after we moved in. Elephant hooves awakened me at 6:45 a.m. I anticipated that the beast overhead would crash through the ceiling and fall in my lap. But apartment floors are apparently constructed of sturdy wood. Good thing. It is only a floor that separates us from him.

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A sister killed, another mourns

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There is no anger in Virginia Suozzo's voice. There's pain, sorrow, even bewilderment.

But no rage.

Her 25-year-old sister, Dawn, was killed last weekend, shot in the head as she walked into their parent's house with her boyfriend, Mitch, and her 12-year-old nephew, Michael.

Dawn Brown grew up in a nice, safe Wollaston neighborhood with four sisters and a brother. The family remains close. All were at their parent's Royal Street home last weekend because Kimberlee Brown, 23, is getting married in August, and last Saturday was the ritual wedding shower.

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Drunk drivers steal tomorrow

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Todd was playing in a yard. Kristen was jogging on a country road. Michael was driving to work. Chris was driving home from work. Lisa was getting in her car. Michelle was crossing the street. All of them children. All of them alive one minute, dead or soon to be dead the next.

Christopher Baldwin, 19, back home in Somerset after his first year of college, was rollerblading last Sunday night when he was killed. Police say a 1985 Camaro struck him from behind, pitched him onto the car's roof and hurled him into a stone wall.

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Two friends forever

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If I had my old high school diary, which I read and tore into a million pieces when I was in my early 20's (Why did I write only when I was miserable? And why did I write so much about boys?), I would see pages and pages of musings about Richard.

There'd be a lot of nasty stuff, I'm sure. Not because I didn't like him. I did. I do. But I was jealous of him. I didn't like that he was so important to my best friend Rosemary. I wondered whether he would be good for her and good to her, and what would happen to me if they became a permanent pair.

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True first loves never really leave

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He was my first real love, a flesh-and-blood boy, not a creation, not someone Rosemary and I invented on a Saturday afternoon as we walked downtown, or on a Saturday night as we babysat.

Those heartthrobs - Val Poche and Jimmy Weber - were actual people, but people we didn't know. They were older boys Rosemary saw at church or at school, around whom we invented a life.

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Even today, HIStory silences the accomplishments of women

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Even today, HIStory silences the accomplishments of women

Since 1987, March has been designated National Women's History Month by the U.S. Congress. That's what Thomas Mann, a sixth grader at the Davis School in Brockton, wrote and told me. "It is a time set aside to honor women, both past and present, for their accomplishments," he said. I'd read a blurb a few days before I received his letter, which mentioned National Women's History Month, but that's been it. There have been no in-depth feature stories; no "women of the day" highlighted every day throughout the month. No widespread recognition at all…

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Everyone needs another mom

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She was a shadow figure for years, made up of parts, never a whole. Her hands washed dishes, scrubbed pots, filled pans with oils and meats and spices. Her feet walked from the table to the countertop to the stove. Her voice was soft, and always friendly. "Do you two want something to drink?" Even when it was firm, it was never harsh. She suggested; she didn't demand.

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Once the finger is pointed, the accused always is guilty

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Once the finger is pointed, the accused always is guilty

All it takes is an accusation. "He did it," someone says, and he did it. That's it. End of story. He can deny doing it. He can say, "It never happened. It wasn't like that. Let me tell you my side." But no one will listen. He's this century's witch. Once someone points a finger, once someone even hints, he's guilty as charged…

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He gives a gift of confidence

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I am sitting in the car, in the passenger seat. My daughter, the 16-year-old, is behind the wheel. She is learning to drive, and I am teaching her, telling her when to speed up, to slow down, to move a little to the left, to be careful of the ice on the road.

I hardly breathe while she drives. I keep my foot poised on an invisible brake. I see a child next to me, a little girl far too young to be driving a car.

My hands are fists as we travel down Dedham Street.

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There is only one true justice for cold-blooded killers: death

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They come and they go - the murdered and the murderers. They fill the front page for a day or two. They lead the nightly news. And then they disappear.

The next day brings different faces, but the same story, the same tragedies.

You think, at the time, I will remember this one. I will remember Kimberly Ray Harbor and Charles Serjeant and Melissa Benoit and Robyn Dabrowski for the rest of my life.

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Tonight two lovebirds will toast St. Valentine and hum `How Soon?'

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I always get the story wrong. No matter how many times I hear it I confuse the details. Was he wearing the sweater with the reindeer the night they met? Or was she? Was it September or October 1947 or 1948?

It was Sept. 5, 1947. He was wearing the reindeer sweater. She was wearing a red Sheltie Mist sweater, white bucks and a camel-hair skirt that swirled every time she swayed. I know because I can see her legs, long and shapely. Incredible, unforgettable legs. That's what Joe said the first time he told me the story and that's what he always says, every time he relates it.

"She had great legs" and "she was absolutely beautiful."

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Sweet 16 and growing up fast

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For years, I would tuck her in every night and sing a little song I made up: "Stay little. Stay little. Little, little stay. Little stay. Little stay little." Even before she understood, I sang these words to her.

But long after there was any need to tuck her in, when she was quite capable of getting into bed herself, I continued with the ritual and the song. It was dumb, I know, but it was a tradition and it was all ours.

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12-year-old in White House deserves a little understanding

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OK, all you professional communicators out there - television anchors and personalities, reporters, columnists, entertainers, satirists, humorists, big shots and little shots alike - raise your right hand and repeat after me:

"I will lay off Chelsea Clinton for the next four years. I will not say or write or even intimate anything negative about her. I will not undermine her, ridicule her or go for a laugh at her expense, either in print or on film.

"I will treat her as if she were my 12-year-old daughter, tenderly, aware that 12 is a tough age to be and that 13 isn't much better, and 14 and 15 are no prizes either, and even an unintentional comment, even a pair of seemingly harmless words such as `frizzy hair' can make a young girl sob and inflict a wound that hurts for a lifetime."

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If Clinton is to succeed, we must work with him, not buck him

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This is what we want from Bill Clinton: We want him to turn the country around, to heal the wounds and bridge the divisions and make us all one nation under God again.

We want him to fix the economy, clean up our cities, put an end to crime, banish illegal drugs, reduce unemployment, repair our schools, invest in education, build affordable housing, find a cure for AIDS, create a universal health-care system, secure nuclear wastes, refurbish our highways, reduce pollution, be fair to Haitians, stand tough with Saddam Hussein, deal with Somalia and talk sense to the Serbs.

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Greats of the 20th century

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A little house-cleaning before the new year begins. Way back in September, I wrote a what-do-you-think column. Who, I asked, has made the greatest contribution to the 20th century?

People I had already spoken with had mentioned Gandhi, Pope John XXIII, John Kennedy, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, Jonas Salk, Henry Ford, Mother Teresa, and Albert Schweitzer. I gave my vote to Walt Disney. But I wanted to know what you thought, and I asked you to write. And you did.

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