Tragedy

Tragedy doesn't paralyze Paul Hicks. It mobilizes him. When he heard about Allie Martin - the 3-year-old Lower Providence Township girl accidentally run over by a lawn mower in late May - he called a couple of friends and started planning to raise funds to help her. Along with Adam Ferraioli Jr., owner of the Amoco gas station at Elm and Corson Streets, Hicks began to plan the day of fun and games for July 17 at the borough's Washington Fire...

For Carrie Mason, a mother of two children in Lakewood, Colo., life changed forever on Nov. 11, 1985. While driving home from a routine trip to the supermarket, she accidentally hit and killed an 8-year-old girl as the child crossed the street. "My world has been turned upside down," said Mason, 34. "My life will never be the same. . . . I will never be the same. " Compounding the tragedy, the child was a classmate of Mason's eldest son, and the only daughter of a neighboring couple she had known for years.

Debate and knee-jerk reactions continue in the tragic Ocean County, N.J., case involving the sexual assault and murder of 11-year-old Eddie Werner. The first knee-jerk reaction in this tragedy is to call for a change in the laws or the creation of new ones to prevent such tragedy. Werner was killed after going door to door selling magazine subscriptions in a Jackson Township Parent-Teacher Association effort to raise money for his school. So why not make a law forbidding primary school children from participating in such activities on behalf of their schools?

John B. Thayer III's adult life was framed and scarred by two of the 20th century's great tragedies. He lost his father on the Titanic, his son in World War II. Finally, on Sept. 20, 1945, a rainy night whose gloom mirrored his despair, Thayer parked his car near a Philadelphia Transit Co. trolley-turnaround at 48th and Parkside in West Philadelphia and slashed his wrists and throat. Although the suicide came long after the supposedly unsinkable Titanic sank on April 15, 1912, exactly 100 years ago Sunday, Thayer was no less a victim than the 1,517 fellow passengers and crew who perished that night in the icy North Atlantic.

Oct. 2 was a day of rest for most students at Conestoga High School, as they enjoyed a reprieve from the stresses of school because of the Yom Kippur holiday. Many were still nestled comfortably in their beds that Monday when Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, shot 10 girls at West Nickel Mines School in Lancaster County, ultimately killing five of them and himself. For Michael Schon, a 17-year-old junior at Conestoga, news of the tragedy hit hard, and he decided to mobilize fellow students to raise money to help the families of the victims.

Guns and Kids - a Tragedy in Several Acts: Scene: A Super Bowl slumber party in West Philadelphia last year. During the halftime show, three girls, 12 and 13, start jumping and dancing. Lakeisha Graham's grandfather hears the commotion and suspects that boys are in the room. He reaches for a handgun. Comic relief: Grandfather bursts in, trips and falls. Later, Lakeisha finds a .22 caliber rifle and begins imitating her grandfather. "I'll shoot you," she laughs, pointing the gun at Tyrea Spencer.

The people who play and cheer for the Montoursville Area High School Warriors understand the importance of Friday night football. A significant part of the way Montoursville perceives itself is and always has been rooted in the local team's tradition of success. Since 1975, the Warriors have compiled a 205-42-5 record. It's just that, well, no one here ever again will consider the outcome of a Friday night game a matter of life and death. A town in grief has put football into perspective.

Consider the word tragedy. It has been whizzing around our ears all weekend, attracted by John F. Kennedy Jr.'s apparent death, with his wife and sister-in-law, in the skies and waters near Martha's Vineyard. There's something disgusting here, something to condemn: the hasty urge to brand another Kennedy as irresponsible. Yet at this moment, many of us are feeling compassion and terror. We are acting like the audience to a tragedy. What I want to tell you is this: Tragedy is about the audience as well as the fallen.

THROUGH HER tears on Sunday, Louise Hartman spoke about the man who left her with severe head trauma when his vehicle struck hers while he was driving high on heroin in 2007.   Hartman's tears were not born out of anger or bitterness, but out of sadness. She had long ago forgiven Garrett Reid for the accident that could have killed them both on Jan. 30, 2007, but she couldn't get over the news yesterday of his untimely death. "I never held any animosity toward him. I felt sorry for him," Hartman, 61, said from her home in Mount Carmel, Pa., about 90 miles northwest of Philly.

When Americans talk about the Oklahoma City bombing, they speak of sorrow, horror and fear. But in Washington, the political jockeying has begun. President Clinton used the bombing to take on right-wing talk radio hosts. Republicans battered him in response. A feminist group used it by trying to link abortion opponents to militia members. Gun-control supporters used it to push for keeping the ban on certain types of semiautomatic assault weapons. Justified or not, the tragedy has become ammunition in political battles.