A Tale of Two Fathers

On the front page of the Oakland Tribune today there are two stories about fathers and the hardships their respective families have had to deal with recently.

On the one hand we have the all-too-common sort of horrible story, in which a man beat his 3-year old son to death because the boy failed to recite his ABC's correctly. The story goes from there to even worse.

This is one of those cases that begs for the death penalty, something that I am finding my willingness to see used ever increasing (and not just because of Sr. Prejean's wretched book).

Stories like this are tedious because of their combination of idiocy, self-centeredness, and frequency. Every week there seems to be some similar story, and it is just about enough to make you want to give up on humanity.

And then there is the other story, the story of such heroism that it seems almost unreal. James Kim's family tried to take an ill-advised shortcut through Oregon's Coastal Range (something that I could see someone doing, thinking of the snow-less California Coastal Range near the Kim's home in the Bay Area). Their car got stuck, the family remained in the car, and after seven days, Mr. Kim decided that the right thing to do was to strike off through the snow to get help.

Wrong thing to do. I could have told him that, but would I have done differently if it had gotten to day seven, we were out of gas and had burned the tires for warmth, and no rescuers were to be seen or heard? Mr. Kim went eight miles, through horrid conditions. He was gravely underequipped yet undaunted, even swimming through a stream (when the air temperature was 20 degrees).

"It seems superhuman to me that he was able to cover the distance that he had," said the local undersherriff.

The loss of James Kim is tremendous, not only to his family, but to society in general. In an era when families tend to make it in the news because of savagery and butchery, to see an example of such total self-sacrifice shows that there is hope for humanity.