Complex legacies

I’ve had a week plus to reflect on the a small plane crash that took the life of a famous athlete, his oldest child, also an athlete, and her teammates and members of her teammates families.

I’ve seen and read a lot of reactions, among them, a feeling that we should not mourn or not grieve the death of the famous athlete because of a sexual assault case.  I’ve seen a lot of pros and cons for how we should feel in the wake of this tragedy, and I don’t feel that either to mourn the loss or not to mourn is a wrong decision; there are certainly points to make either way, but I had some thoughts on how not to arrive at your personal decision the main one being, minimizing and excusing the wrongdoing: Examples include things I actually heard like, “well, it was only once.”  “well, it wasn’t like he killed anyone.”

These thing may be true, but they’re not an excuse.  The old saying, “a coward dies a thousand deaths, a hero only once,” isn’t really true.  Because there are a lot of people who aren’t cowards who die thousands of time, or pray for death, or struggle to rebuild their lives after the horror that is rape and sexual assault.  From an outsider perspective, it’s easy to say, “well, he didn’t kill someone,” but maybe that’s not a full picture.

I read a book by an amazing author who handled this issue of complex legacy in a beautiful way.  It’s The Year We Hid Away by Sarina Bowen.  The heroine of the tale is an athlete with a celebrity father who does lots of charitable work in the community and region.  He’s also an accused serial child molester, rapist and pedophile.  She has no idea if he’s guilty or innocent but has to deal with the media spotlight, her mother who prefers to live in ignorance, and the people of their community who treat her as if she had committed the offense or knew about it and was complicit.

Without spoiling the book, there’s an interaction towards the end where she meets one of the children who benefited from the charity work her father did, but never met her father.  He adds another layer of complexity to the story, because the charitable work her father did, regardless of his motivations, helped people; actual people, when they needed help.

Can we, without forgiving the evil they did, acknowledge the good that they did?  Does that dishonor their memories?  What’s the tipping point where the good outweighs the evil?  It’s easy when people don’t do good and focus on doing evil.  But most of us lie in the middle, telling ourselves that our evils aren’t really *that* evil. (and let’s be honest, for the most part, that’s true.  Our evil is probably more annoying than truly evil.)

But there are people, who have done both evil things and great things.  Which do you focus on?  We have this debate historically as well, with figures like Margaret Sanger who promoted advocacy for reproductive health for women, was pro equality among races and sexes, but also believed in eugenics and wanted the “best” people to increase their breeding, while reducing the number of children born to parents who, often because of poverty were unfit to raise children.  In this she found kind of an accidental common cause with white supremacists that she never separated herself from.  A complex legacy.

The same John Adams who defended the soldiers of the Boston massacre with the idea that everyone deserves a fair trial, and signed the constitution and bill of rights, also signed the first sedition act and the first naturalization acts.  A complex legacy.

And to that list, we had another; an athlete who promoted education and opportunity for marginalized youth, who helped people, but as a mature rational adult, trapped a 19 year old into sex.  A complex legacy.

Speaking of complex legacies, I also recommend to your attention, if you like early 20th century literature, The Cardinal’s Mistress; published in 1929.