When people see horrifying things they tend to try to ignore it, pretend it is not there, or worst of all belittle it into something justifiable.

Journal Entry November 2000

What is truth?

Is it morally right to judge someone you've never met
if they have not received a trial, or a fair say in court
because bureaucrats tell you they have participated in
wrongdoing?

What is Justice if condemnation comes before the opportunity
to review all facts?

The shareholders began to write with increasing support in October, by the end of the month they were encouraging us to declare Chapter 11.

Bankruptcy felt like failure,
but we came to realize
it was the last path we had to make things right.

I personally knew it was time to move on,
but there was a rage burning inside.

Resentment at all that was lost,
and bewilderment at the hatred of strangers
that stood in judgment of us.

One thing in particular nearly consumed me.

How does one describe another person
whose life is completely motivated by hate,
the need to perform character assassination,
or destroy another person's life....
no matter how many other countless people
are destroyed in the process?

I've tried to understand this as I have come to terms
with why a man I had never personally met but on one brief occasion
when he was seething with hatred while people took things from our home.

Enter the cast of lynching participants.

Lawrence Warfield, whose
desire to burn our family at the stake overpowered
his obligations as the receiver of our assets and company.

Roger Wilkins, a self proclaimed expert
and an ex-convict who elected to serve as the
voice of biased truth for hundreds of our
deaf shareholders.

Roger was a man who my family, and I had never met,
not once, but to him this did not matter whatsoever.

Then there was Stan Tadlock, an ACC investigator,
who wore his beaurocratic investigators badge
as a symbol of male empowerment on the front
of his button down western denim pants.

The day we first met he stood in our home
and glared with pure unbridled hatred.

In him I saw a small mind,
a part of history,
the kind of man who belonged under a white hood,
or smiling in front of a body at a photo of a lynching.

It was disturbing,
that someone with this amount of biased anger
could yield so much power in a government agency.

Each of these men had the same characteristics,
they could in turn be identified as
a single person with little distinction.

What was the type of man
that would spend so much time
and energy consumed with unbridled hatred?

His history, and his judgment,
accurate or not was all that mattered.

He repeated rumors as facts,
with no evidence to support his claims.

He was the driving force behind the public lynching our character,
our lives, and our business had encountered.

He would take the word of documented thieves,
over hard evidence,
and ignore facts from witnesses to build his own story.

He would expend so much energy
so much effort into making people want to lynch our family
and our company, out of business.

I began to ask the shareholders who wrote,
the friends who had come
forward in public, and our family....
why would a stranger hate this much?

" It's one thing to put a company into
receivership "

one shareholder said,

"But it's something entirely different when
the people who are
supposedly protecting the shareholders
are sneaking around obtaining court orders
without you being served,
then turn around and slander
and lie about you in public,
contribute to character assassination....
from where I stand this is disgusting,
this is a witch hunt "

Ironically, it was upon this realization
that I finally found peace with my own assessment of him.

His opinion was only as important as I allowed it to be,
and when I stepped back and looked at how little
this man mattered to the thousands of people
that needed to move on from this entire incident....
I suddenly realized I was not entitled to feel anything but pity
for such a lonely, angry and embittered man.

I recognized it was time for the healing to begin,
and the hate to slip away,
and though I knew this was the path I had to take.

I fought the pain of the agonizing memories
that would be difficult to suppress,
and the discovery of shaking the horror
of not only what our family had been through
but also the families of so many other people
that had been unwillingly pulled into this nightmare.

The questions came as a flood,
with the pain.

How do we ignore people who judge us simply
because of superficial appearances?

How do we prevent this from happening to someone else?

How do we move past such hate?

Such ignorant, simple, hate.

There is so much hate among people,
so much contempt inside people
who'd like you to think they're moral,
that they have to hire prizefighters
to do their hating for them.

And we do.

We get into a ring
and act out other people's hates.

Floyd Patterson (1935-____)
US boxer