Childhood Hunger

Bill Shore’s Letters

Letter From the Back of the Newspaper

November 2003

Dear Friend,

This past week marked a sobering turning point in the war in Iraq. I don't mean the downing of the Chinook helicopter that killed 15 brave American soldiers, or the Black Hawk chopper lost just a few days later, and the even more recent copter collision that took so many lives. No, the worst news of all was what wasn't news at all any longer. And it caused me to reflect on our work here at home.

On Sunday, November 9, the Washington Post reported the previous day's deaths of two American soldiers when a roadside bomb destroyed their vehicle on a highway near Fallujah. During the early days of the war such tragic news merited special bulletins and dramatic front page coverage. But on Sunday it was not even given it's own article, merely mentioned seven paragraphs down in a story on page 22 about the Red Cross closing its offices in Baghdad, (a separate tragedy in its own right). The Post did find room on its front page, for a headline above the masthead that read "Navy Loses to Notre Dame on Last-Second Field Goal"

What can be said except to shake one's head like the weary but wise, and recognize that this is the way of the world. What was once unthinkable, dawns suddenly one morning as imaginable, solely by virtue of having become fact. And as the world continues to turn and the sun continues to rise, what was once imaginable but unacceptable gradually becomes accepted, and eventually, even worse, inevitable.

This evolution in news coverage felt as disturbing as the first time I noticed that when an ambulance responds to a call the attendants don't really run from their vehicle like on TV but rather stroll up the sidewalk as unhurriedly as if checking the gas meter. They had an air of having seen it all, their senses dulled to shock. Urgency seems futile in the face of relentlessly overwhelming need. Time's treachery is that we all become philosophical - which is a kind of euphemism for accepting what we once believed we would never accept.

For those fighting to change the world, ADS (ambulance driver syndrome) may be the debilitating disease of our time. We are all susceptible. Whether your passion is kids who can't read, families without health care, hunger and malnutrition, or the violence that plagues too many communities, if you keep at it long enough you find that not everyone shares the same intensity of commitment, that not everyone runs from the ambulance anymore, that maybe even you don't run as hard as you once did. Certain efforts require more than money to sustain them. They require moral fire.

This challenge confronts all of us at Share Our Strength directly and personally. We've waged the battle to alleviate hunger for almost 20 years now. The next twenty years will demand even more from us if we are to achieve our priority goal of actually ending childhood hunger in America. And while we don't have all of the answers and all of the resources we will need, we do have a commitment that has not wavered, and a sense of urgency based on our knowledge and experience that the lives of human beings hang in the balance.

Nothing is more tragic than a nation of abundance too comfortable and complacent to appreciate the full measure of its true treasure. Whether it is America's young men and women being ambushed in Iraq or America's boys and girls facing food insecurity in homes whose food stamps don't reach the end of the month, we need to keep them at the front of our conscience even if when the newspapers no longer keep them on their front page.

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