The Morning After

[Betsy Voinovich]

I couldn't sleep last night so I got up and tried to find a song that would make me feel better on YouTube. I remembered "Don't Say a Prayer For Me Now, Save It Til the Morning After" and looked it up. I found Duran Duran in London a couple of weeks ago, after the Paris bombings, congratulating and encouraging the crowd that had come out to see them, knowing that people had been killed weeks earlier at a similar concert hall in Paris. He asks the people to hold up their cellphone flashlights and shine a light for those people and all the people doing their best to be brave and live their lives in a world that sometimes turns very very evil.

So here it is:

Listening to this I thought about how proud I am of every single person who has worked so hard to make the lives of their fellow humans better. As I looked at all of the lights I thought, That is the number of people whose lives Lakewood Hospital has saved over the years. This is what we have been fighting for. The Save Lakewood Hospital group which has done an excellent job of unifying folks and getting the message out, almost half of the city voted to save the hospital. And all of the others doing what they could, bringing their expertise, their words, their reminiscences, their light, their spirit to this cause. All the light, all the voices.

I have met people in the past year who will be friends forever who I never would have met without this crisis. I am so grateful for the people I have met and for the experience of fighting together for what is right. I talked to my father about how discouraging this could be and he said, "The end is not the point. The fight is the point. Fighting the good fight is the point. It changes things. Letting each other know that no-one is alone in standing up for what is right and good for everyone." It is your highest purpose. It is a privilege to work for this cause. Look at the lights, listen to the voices, that's us! That's the people before us who kept this hospital and this city going. That's who and what we are fighting for. And now we are together! Now we know each other. We can keep spreading the message. There are a lot more people like us. Maybe the new name of the group should be "Save Lakewood." We are up to it.

The shameful way the Council and mayor rushed this thing through--- because they knew they'd have to be manipulative and sneaky to make it work at all-- the hundreds of lies--- that's what the bad guys do. We knew that. How many bad guys are there? A lot! Are they terrible people or just uninformed or just frightened? Whoever they are, they are our community and we have been examples and we will continue to be, with a very simple theme:

Lives matter. Our lives matter, the lives of the future matter. We will stand up for ourselves and each other. That's it.

There's a lot more to do. In the past weeks I have heard talk of recalling the mayor and the council along with putting the hospital referendum on the ballot. I can only say,
Yeah! Get in the ring! Do what you can do.

No matter what, be proud of yourselves for what you have done, and who you are, standing up and working so hard for WHAT IS RIGHT. Your neighbors' lives.

Hooray for all of us. Onward.

Betsy Voinovich

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. --Teddy Roosevelt

[tom monahan]

Betsy:

Thanks for those thoughtful remarks and be assured that this fight is not over. The timid souls on council tried to justify their votes, but what came through to me that they kept saying "we had no choice." Their apparent lack of negotiating skill was really put on public display last night.

There is a singular example of Mike Skindell and Dr. Terry Kilroy speaking to council. Nothing more after that. They did not seek anyone out after that to provide the collective group with the thousands of pages of information obtained through the discover process of our lawsuit. Several were spoken to in private and I cannot fathom how they reach another conclusion after the decanting plan was exposed to the light of public scrutiny. All of my adult working life I have had positions that called for deep investigation of the facts to ferret out the truth, no matter where it led. If the evidence had shown otherwise, I would have been sitting with the "blue shirts". But it did not. Ring me up if you want to discuss anything. I have spent more time in the phone booth these past 11 months than Superman!

Last night was a de ja vu moment for me and Dr. Kilroy. Almost 19 years to the day we each spoke out against the first definitive agreement with its many flaws and urged the council at that time not to sign it. So Doc Kilroy and I are not neophytes at battling the the Clinic

[Lori Allen _]

Betsy,
Thank you for your touching post. I don't think it was any surprise the way the vote went last night. Tom is right, we are powerful, and that is without the local media outlets that our council, mayor and CCF appear to have made an offer to in order to keep SLH out of the news. Regroup and then onward!