A Book of American Martyrs(194)

He killed them. They died. That is all there was.

Soon, before she was quite prepared, she found herself back at 1183 Howard Avenue. But the Broome County Women’s Center was gone and in its place the canary-yellow Peony Christian Daycare Center. That is all there is.


YET, SHE WOULD PERSEVERE.

Calling Madelena to leave a message—I am discouraged but I will not give up.

In a hoarse voice adding—I love you.


AT LAST, Thelma Barron consented to see her. But only for less than an hour, and only for a recording and not a video.

“No one needs to see my face in your video. It’s enough, you will use my father’s face.”

Thelma Barron spoke flatly, resentfully. The word use was inflected, scornful.

A middle-aged woman, with ironic eyes. An intelligent woman, doing her best to be courteous with a stranger.

Badly Naomi missed the solace of the camera. For a camera lens is turned away from us allowing us to hide behind it. There is the illusion of invisibility, innocence.

Instead, she would record the interview—the other daughter’s words. The two would sit across from each other at a weatherworn picnic table behind the Barrons’s handsome old Victorian house on Mercy Street, in a backyard in need of mowing and raking. Naomi’s cheeks burned to hear the other’s words that were alternately faltering and angry, wounded and incensed.

For a long time we could not speak of it. Your father’s name was bitter to us.

This grief we felt, that our father we loved so much had been killed because he had volunteered at the Center, and he had died beside Dr. Voorhees—and no one knew or cared except his family and a few others.

In the news stories always the headline was VOORHEES. Always the focus was VOORHEES. The name is terrible to us to this day, we cannot speak it aloud.

After they died, it was VOORHEES who was honored. It was VOORHEES’S picture you would see. It was VOORHEES that was the martyr. On the anti-abortion websites it was stated that Timothy Barron’s death was COLLATERAL DAMAGE and in a war COLLATERAL DAMAGE is to be regretted but not to be avoided.

I am sorry to speak like this to you—Naomi. I know that there is a terrible wound in your heart too. But I am not a “sister” to you. That will not be.

Dr. Voorhees was not our father’s friend though our father wished that Dr. Voorhees would be his friend. He had invited your father to our house for supper more than once, and always your father had an excuse.

Dad would speak of Gus Voorhees as his friend, proudly. But it was not to be.

Our loss is a more bitter thing than yours and unjust because your father is acclaimed and honored and will not be forgotten while our father Timothy Barron is forgotten by all but a few.

Let me tell you—our father was a truly good man. He was retired from the U.S. Army where he had had the rank of major. He had served in the Vietnam War from 1966 to 1971. In his private life he had dedicated himself to helping others, he would say that was why he had been allowed to live while other men in his platoon had died. He had returned he said from Hell.

Because Dad was a big man people misunderstood him for Dad was a quiet man and in his heart he was gentle. He would say, he had made himself into a “warrior” to protect his country. But he did not have the soul of a “warrior”—he said. He would compare himself to one of our dogs who was a sheepdog-collie mix. We would joke how Andy could scare off a burglar if the burglar just saw him but if Andy saw the burglar, he would run in the other direction—Andy never even barked, if he could help it. His bark was like somebody coughing. Andy weighed one hundred fifteen pounds at his heaviest . . .

Nobody grieved for Dad more than Andy. Poor sweet dog would whine and whimper and could not stay still. The first week or so Dad was gone, Andy was beside himself. His tail would thump, he’d try to convince himself that Dad was on his way into the house, he’d get excited, but then it came to nothing and you could see the life die out in his eyes. Andy is an old dog now and sometimes still he will go out into the driveway and lie stretched down waiting for Dad to turn into the driveway.

It breaks your heart. You can’t tell an animal what has happened to change his entire life and take away his happiness.

Our father had always been supportive of women and girls. It wasn’t just that he had four daughters and one son. That was how Dad felt.

Some people in the family were surprised and maybe did not approve—Dad said “women’s rights” are the wave of the future.

All us girls, his daughters, Dad made sure we were educated—so we could do better than him, he said. (Dad did pretty well in his life! He owned Barron’s Auto Supplies here in town with one of his brothers.)

Our grandmother, Dad’s mother, had done volunteer work too. Church, school, hospital, hospice. Grandma was a volunteer at the Muskegee Falls Animal Shelter until a week before she died at age eighty-seven and the day she died was just a day after the anniversary of Dad’s death last year.

We are not angry toward the Voorhees family—of course. We are over that now. I’m sorry if I spoke harshly and without thinking. I did not think that I could speak with you at all which is why I did not answer your first letter. There is no interest on our part in a “documentary” on Dr. Voorhees. It is very painful for any of us even now to recall what happened to our father. And justice was just so slow, the trial kept getting postponed . . .