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Sarah and me

Elsewhere on this page I am posting today's column by Sarah Overstreet, a feature writer for Springfield News-Leader. I thought it was WONDERFUL and very much worth passing on to those of you who don't have the privilege of reading her stuff.

Sarah and I are an interesting story in ourselves which has a good point to make. Sarah has been writing for the News-Leader for a long time, certainly since before 1983. I know, because that's the year they hired me to write a weekly column for their editorial page wherein I was supposed to show my conservative social issue and political points of view in such a controversial way so as to garner more readership for their newspaper.

Those of you who know me will recognize that this was right down my "opinionated outspoken alley".

Back in those days people could have their letters to the editor printed anonymously, so while my name and picture appeared each week with my philosophizing, people could come at me from all sides with their criticisms and I never knew who they were. Sarah, on the other hand, could find fault with my writings, and did in her writings, but had to sign her name. So over the course of 9 years our picking at each other went on quite frequently, but we didn't know each other, had never laid eyes on each other.

I quit writing in 1992 because I was antagonizing my insurance clients who disagreed with me, and I needed their commissions more than the monthly small stipend the newspaper was paying for me to generate letters to the editor.

Sarah, meanwhile, continued to write.

Then last year, when I took up the cause for Dr. Ramona Miller, I found out Sarah was working on her cause, too, and as fate would have it, Sarah and I met at the Laclede County jail one day while both of us were there to visit Dr. Miller. We took to each other immediately, and have become good friends, even finding out we have much more in common than we ever had in diversity, and I just love her and admire her so much.

And the moral of this story is....if everyone could really get to know each other, we might fight less and actually expend our energies working for good instead of using it against each other.

Now, if you have read this far, please read very carefully her column I have posted. And then read the veterans' tribute which she had printed along with her column. It is SO beautiful and moving.

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