St.Louis,Mo. Nov. 17, 1973
THE PAPER To the Editor:
Recently when collecting for Muscular Dystrophy I was disgusted to get this response from a seemingly gracious person.
Everyone has a right to select a particular charity to help, he also has the privilege to refuse to give, and that is perfectly understandable.
But couldn’t it be a gracious refusal instead of an oafishly insensitive response such as: “we don’t believe in it, and we don’t give!”
My answer to her was ‘That if she had a son who died of Muscular Dystrophy, and another dying, it might change her mind, and she might ‘believe.’
Frankly, I don’t ‘believe in’ cancer, or heart trouble or mental illness or diabetes, but they are real sicknesses and they happen in the best of families, my own included.
So I’m appalled with the seeming ‘malapropism of that ridiculous remark ‘believe in’.
God grant that this person will never know what it is to have her children live only — to die slowly, slowly year after year. Not a very pretty, tidy picture.
The dictionary’s definition of insensitive is: apathetic, unfeeling, indifferent, cool, dull, passionless, emotionless, torpid. Not susceptible to agencies or influence; deficient in sensibility or acuteness of feeling. (This probably sums up the rebuttal quite well.)
Thank you for allowing me to express my opinion.
Sincerely yours, Mrs.Thomas P.Neill
Originally published in The Paper, December 1973.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1973_12.pdf, printed page(s) 2.
