On Christmas morning, police in Crown Heights, New York found both Donna Fountain and a small piece of crumpled notebook paper on which she had written her dreams. Both were found near the intersection of Troy Avenue and Eastern Parkway shortly after the sun came up.
(Photo Credit New York Daily News)
Ms. Fountain, 38, who carried her list everywhere, had been on her way to her job as a home health care aide that morning. The police were there because she had been run down by a hit-and-run driver – and killed.
Ms. Fountain’s list – written in pencil – was both simple and straightforward. At the top, it said, MY DREAMS. Underneath were five items:
1. Work on my dream job.
2. Buy a house by 45.
3. Start housing for gay and lesbian teens.
4. Marry the woman of my dreams.
5. See my son, Elijah, graduate from college.
New York Daily News
None of them will come true.
Elijah, 8, never got to open his Christmas presents with his mother; he will be raised by relatives.
Completely absent from Ms. Fountain’s list – which friends told the Daily News she carried with her everywhere – was any mention of any request or want from anyone else. Like nearly all Americans, she hoped to make her dreams come true on her own.
"She gave everything she had to her son and worked so hard for him," said her friend Dena Baveghems, 28.
"She was all about making her dreams come true. Nothing could have stopped her except this."
New York Daily News
Ms. Fountain, in other words, was no Mitt Romney. No one paid for this struggling single mother to go to an elite private school and college. No one footed the bill for Harvard Law or Harvard Business School. Ms. Fountain likely never considered herself "entitled" -- the way so many scions of privilege do -- to attend such schools or to reap the financial rewards that such attendance can convey.
Instead, she got up before sunrise on Christmas morning and headed out to work, in hopes that one day her hard work would allow her the "dreams" of watching her son graduate from college and of owning her own home.
At a speech a week or so before Donna Fountain was run over by a grey car in Brooklyn, Mr. Romney castigated the “entitlement society” supposedly desired by President Obama (the son of a single mother who dreamed of his graduation from college).
In the President’s "entitlement society," Mr. Romney said, "everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort and willingness to take risk.
"President Barack Obama has reversed John Kennedy’s call for sacrifice," Romney said. "He would have Americans ask, ‘What can the country do for you?’ "
Washington Post
Never mind, of course, that "the country" has given Mitt Romney so very much – including a world-class education, rich parents, and open doors wherever he went. It’s hard to fail with all that laid out at your feet.
And to Mr. Romney, I guess, "risk" involves making bets on whether the company your venture capital fund is buying to break up and sell will actually make you another $10 million or so. Or more.
It likely does not mean the risk of setting out on Christmas morning to put in another day as a home health care aid to provide better dreams for your much loved son, and to end up dead on a cold New York street instead.
With a pocketful of dreams on a bit of notebook paper . . . that will never come true.