Tunku Varadarajan of the Wall Street Journal profiles Debra Burlingame, fresh from a victory over the ill-fated "International Freedom Center" at Ground Zero and determined to keep up her relentless focus on the true meaning of 9/11.
Her well-heeled opponents dismissed her as a pretty "Westchester housewife." Big mistake.
Rage renders some people incoherent and others blind. It causes some to flare up--fiercely, but briefly--and then to burn out. In others, it does no more than instill sadness, and paralysis. Yet in Debra Burlingame--the 51-year-old sister of Charles F. "Chic" Burlingame, the pilot of the plane that was crashed into the Pentagon by terrorists on September 11, 2001--rage has fueled eloquence, an impressively mulish obstinacy, and an almost eerie moral clarity.Composure is only a part of her arsenal. "Anger can be very, very productive, as long as it's focused and you don't lose your mind. After the London bombings [in July], someone asked me, 'Have we become complacent? Do you miss 9/11, when people had more unity?' And I say, 'No, no, no. What I miss is the anger. And the clarity. That's what I miss.' "
Read the whole thing.
Related:
• Take Back the Memorial - web site
• Ground Zero has been stolen
• Fighting the rock stars of grief