Letter from Chip Northrup

Be Grateful for Small Mercies

Like most herd animals, we are oblivious to the suffering of others until it gets close to us. Not until when we, our family, or friends are threatened, do we react. As the father of two daughters and grandfather of four granddaughters, that happened to me when Texas reinstated a 100-year-old law that prohibits abortion—even for an incestuously raped child.

It happened again recently, when the Air Force removed a training video that showed Tuskegee Airmen in World War II. (https://www.fox44news.com/news/national-world-news/ap-more-dei-fallout-air-force-scraps-course-that-used-videos-of-tuskegee-airmen-and-female-wwii-pilots/)

The late Dr. Clifton Wharton Jr., a long-time summer resident of Cooperstown, was in the last class of the Tuskegee Airmen. He was also a friend. The Whartons were scorned socially by some when they first moved to Cooperstown. But not by everyone.

Dr. Wharton was in hospice when America decided to return a draft-dodging conman to the White House. He was dead before he could see a memorial to the Tuskegee Airmen erased by a demagogue’s decree. Be grateful for small mercies.

Chip Northrup
Cooperstown