I Still Believe People Are Good at Heart

Some years ago, my father, who passed away eight years ago this week just shy of 88, watched a news story and remarked that he was glad he wouldn't be around to see the next generation.

I remembered those words of his when I heard about the shootings on the campus of Virginia Tech. It's too tragic for words. Every one of those victims, as well as the perpetrator, had family and friends who loved them and are surely devastated and baffled about this murderous rampage. That adds up to a lot of shattered lives.

Maybe it's not right for me, as a strict bystander to this carnage and not affected by it personally, to paraphrase Anne Frank's famous words near the end of her diary, expressing hope for mankind before she succumbed to an evil extermination, but, like her, I believe that most people try to live their lives under a shroud of decency and within the limits of the law.

My condolences to the loved ones of all the victims.