We Must Never Forget By Mark Mondalek

Helen Thomas was a patriot.

“You have to believe in something,” she once told me, “Believe in democracy.”

Patriotism is, of course, a relative thing. Shamefully, it has almost become a dirty word these days, increasingly harbored by those who take the word of the government as though it were scripture; those who behave permissive of the Washington war machine; don’t doubt, don’t ask why.

I guess I shouldn’t find it quite so coincidental that, as the constitutional rights of Americans continue to be squandered away in greater and greater furtherance to the principles of democracy, so goes the conceptual understanding of what it means to be a true patriot as well.

This was precisely the sort of existential conundrum that Thomas railed against throughout her entire career, especially after 9/11. In the buildup to the Iraq War, Thomas looked on helplessly as a cloak of patriotic fear swept over the vast majority of her colleagues and she was further isolated as one of the lone voices of dissent. She maintained a strong belief that the entire tragedy itself might have been averted altogether had the press just simply done their job, a sentiment that was deeply signified in her book, Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public, bravely written almost four year years prior to her untimely retirement in June 2010.

Helen Thomas was my cousin. She was first cousins with my grandmother. They both grew up together in Detroit, separated in age by only a few months. She would introduce me as her nephew sometimes, just because it was easier that way.

But we were really cousins.

I met Helen for the first time the summer of 2011. After arriving at her quaint Washington apartment––jet-lagged and surreally toasting a glass of white wine with the Helen Thomas inside her living room––the first thing that I could think to do, as a sort of token of our shared commonalities, was to present her with a small photograph of my grandmother that was taken when she was about 20 years old; smiling prettily with her long, curly locks of dark, Lebanese hair.

Instantaneously, Helen leaned forward and gave it a kiss.

I admit it’s been a bit overwhelming to see the many news articles and dedications about Helen scattered all over the Internet in the days following her death on July 20, 2013. While querying different publications all across the nation with the one-on-one interviews that I’d accumulated over the course of two years, there were times in which I felt as though I was peddling some kind of leper, a blacklisted McCarthyist victim of sorts, not one of the most iconic figures in journalistic history.

“I have contempt for a lot of reporters,” she freely admitted to me during one of our early interview sessions, portions of which have just recently been published here.

“They don’t ask the question,” she continued on. “They go with the flow. They go with the story of whatever is going on instead of asking why.

“I think they go with the pack. They want to be on the right side. They don’t want to stand out.”

And as for the secret to asking those tough questions, the very skill in which she stacked an entire career upon: “Just ask them! If anything occurs to you—why? Why did you do this? Why did you do that? Just ask it.”

The simplicity of it still astounds me.

Thomas was, after all, a woman who led by actions. She didn’t operate like politicians, speaking in endless droves and circles. She existed within the minutiae of our political reality. She knew that the roots of our democracy ultimately reside in but the most simplest of questions. In a world where so many of the nation’s elite are beset to simply rest on their laurels; sit comfortably in the seats of prosperity that they have forged for themselves, Helen Thomas––not unlike Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden, Sibel Edmonds, and other notable patriots of this century––wasn’t afraid to risk it all in order to speak her own piece of truth upon the world. I can’t think of many greater ways of honoring democracy than that.

Prior to her passing, I had been very preoccupied with understanding the notion of why we choose to honor or remember certain individuals for the deeds that they accomplished. I see now that it is not for the purposes of ego or flattery. It is not simply because it’s the right thing to do or that it’s somehow expected of us. It’s really for the sake of future generations that the torch must continue to be carried, for once the flame of a true original finally burns out at last, we suddenly become alive to the understanding that we will never see another one like them ever again––not in a million years.

Just as we wish to bestow upon our children the reality of a world in which dinosaurs once roamed or alert them to the knowledge of a man named Jefferson who once penned a declaration, it’s just as so that we teach them about a woman by the name of Helen who, when she saw a door that was open just a crack, didn’t simply squeak past it––she flung it wide open.

To quote from George Orwell’s now-widely referenced 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future… who controls the present controls the past.”

I believe that it is in the best interest of certain people to erase the memory of a woman like Helen Thomas from the country’s collective consciousness; sweep her from the history books and denigrate her accomplishments. Therefore, our collective duty is very simple: we must never forget.

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Mark Mondalek – BFP contributing author, is a writer and editor based in Detroit.