"The life is mightier than the book that reports it. The most important thing in the world is that our faith becomes living experience and deed of life."
Norman Morrison, 1965
(notes from a lesson for an adult class at Stony Run Meeting)
Forty five years ago. At dusk. The Pentagon. In front of McNamara's window. Norman R. Morrison handed his off his infant daughter Emily and set himself a blaze.
"The Quaker did it one rush hour evening, in gathering dark. No Buddhist monks were present to feed peppermint oil on the flames and keep down the smell of burning flesh. The fire shot ten to twelve feet into the air- so said a Pentagon guard who tore to an alarm box to call the fire department... The flames, people said, made an envelope of color around his asphyxiating body. The sound of it, one witness said, was like the whoosh of small-rocket fire."
Morrison left behind a wife, Anne, and in addition to Emily, two small children. The day after his death,
a letter arrived.
"Dearest Anne, please don't condemn me. For weeks, even months, I have been praying only that I be shown what I must do. This morning with no warning I was shown...at least I shall not plan to go without my child, as Abraham did. Know that I love thee but must act for the children in the priests village. Norman"
Words have never been sufficient to explain the Morrison sacrifice, and so here at home, thirty years of
silence sealed the date in mute grief and horror. Only
The Living and the Dead: Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War and
In Retrospect finally call for an accounting, later offered by Anne Morrison Welsh herself in
Fire of the Heart and
Held in the Light.
In Vietnam, there was no such moratorium. The magnitude was immediately clear. Morrison was at once at folk hero. A street in Hanoi bears his name - Mo Ri Xon. A stamp in his honor. Seven days after his death, revolutionary poet Tố Hữu penned the words that claim Emily as their child, words still recited by Vietnamese school children even today.
Forty five years later, our words remain insufficent. So they will be few here.
Just enough to remember, to honor great sacrifice.
Just enough to again say Peace in the face of endless war.