Karen Spears Zacharias, in an
op-ed in today's NYWT, tells a hearsay story of a woman whose husband was killed in Iraq, whose funeral was supposedly picketed by "anti-war protesters." I do not believe any such thing ever happened.
This was supposedly in Jacksonville, Florida. Zacharias writes:
THE woman sitting across from me at a Chili's restaurant in Jacksonville, Fla., did not look old enough to be a widow. Twenty-seven years old, she had the just-cut bangs of a schoolgirl, a tattoo on her forearm and a trendy round purse at her side. How, she asked, would she tell her daughter, still a toddler, that her father had died in Iraq?
For the last few months, she told me, she has been replaying the moments of her husband's life, and his death. Antiwar protesters turned out at the funeral, the woman said. They lined the streets across from the service. Some carried signs and others shouted as her husband's flag-draped coffin was carried past.
She mentions the "Rev." Fred Phelps later, but clearly the point of this essay is that "antiwar" protesters are marring dead soldiers' funerals. I can't prove this didn't happen, but I have looked pretty hard and I can't find any reference to any such event.
Clearly this is a canard, like the returning Vietnam vets who were supposedly spat upon. If anybody can confirm that it did happen, let me know. If anybody comes from that area, have you ever heard of such an incident? If not, the NYT needs to run a correction.
On the other hand, if it is happening, it is obviously a very bad idea, and we should repudiate it.