Every Person Has A Story!

   Something has been bothering me lately and it has to do with the death of Kobe Bryant, Gianna Bryant and "7 others!"  Every single time this story has been mentioned on the news, it has been presented as such.  I want to yell at the newscasters and say, "If a member of your family was one of those '7 others,' would you tell the story differently?"
   Every person on that helicopter had a relationship with Kobe and basketball, but no, they were not famous.  BUT each one had a family, like Kobe, and each one had an important, fun, exciting life that he/she was living and each one mattered to so many people who loved him/her.  Each and every one!  But the news mainly centered around Kobe and Gianna.  Do the others deserve to be clumped into one lump sum as "7 others?!"  NO!!!
   This happens every year when it comes to September 11, too.  The Twin Towers get all of the attention, while the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA are almost like after thoughts.  It annoys me every year!  They all deserve the same amount of attention, because each and every person that was killed that day, went to work, like it was just a normal day, and each expected to go home at night to be with their families.  They are you and me.  
   I was watching CBS Sunday Morning a week or so ago and they did a very moving piece on Auschwitz.  They said that Auschwitz is the largest cemetery in the world!  One million people are buried there!  In 1939, before the Holocaust, there were 16 1/2 million Jews in the world;  now, 75 years after Auschwitz was liberated, there are just under 15 million, worldwide!  It's truly beyond comprehension to be able to picture how many lives were snuffed out.  It almost becomes mind numbing like our national debt, or other government figures in the trillions.  What does that look like?  Not a  clue!  It's a lot!  The same with the millions of Jews who were slaughtered.  Too vast to comprehend.  I have been to several Holocaust Museums in Washington, DC, Israel, and Dallas.  THAT'S where one can begin to comprehend what was lost, because in these sobering museums are where you see the shoes.  For each pair of shoes, a person existed- man, woman, child- each person put on a pair of shoes that day or mothers and dads put them on their children and expected to take them off at the end of the day, maybe placing them beside their warm beds.  Each person had hopes and dreams and talents and love and and and.........Thinking of a pair of shoes rather than a humongous, incomprehensible number hits you between the eyes... in the solar plexus.... in your soul.
    So, back to Kobe.  I know that he was a giant of a man and I am sad that he died, especially the way that he did.  I am sad for Gianna, who had her whole talented life ahead of her, and I'm sad for all of those people who loved them both, especially his wife and other daughters,  but I am  equally sad for John Altobelli, his wife, Keri and their daughter, Alyssa.  Three members of one family wiped out in a flash!  What about their loved ones left behind?  Let's say the names of Christina Mauser, mother of 3, Ara Zobayan, the pilot, and Sarah and Payton Chester, mother and daughter.  They died, too and their lives affected so many other lives!  I love what Todd Schmidt, the former principal of Payton's elementary school wrote: "While the world mourns the loss of a dynamic athlete and humanitarian, I mourn the loss of two people JUST AS IMPORTANT (my caps!)...THEIR IMPACT WAS JUST AS MEANINGFUL, THEIR LOSS WILL BE JUST AS KEENLY FELT AND OUR HEARTS ARE JUST AS BROKEN."  
   Each person has a story and each story deserves to be told.