Victims Voices

You don’t remember me.

You remember Ted Bundy, Charles Whitman, John Wayne Gacy, Charles Manson, Timothy McVeigh. Tsarnaev has become a household photo on every news show and will soon join the list.   You analyze them.  You make them antiheros, celebrities, prison pen pals. You sell their movie rights.
Without me, you wouldn’t even care about their names.
Before I was Victim #5 I was Cynthia Hinds.  When you could still recognize me I was Gloria Davy.  I once had the face of Mary Ann Jordan.  I hadn’t even started high school as Samuel Stapleton.  As Josephine Otero I would never experience middle school. I am over two thousand in the Twin Towers.  I’m buried in Oklahoma and Boston.  I was at the UT-Austin Bell Tower.  I’m too numerous to name.
I’m the one who deserves recollection.  I’m the one who suffered, fought, prayed, and did not go quietly.   I’m the one who gave you evidence to find the one who killed me. I crashed the plane in a field in Pennsylvania.  I’m the face that keeps the fascination from becoming less than human.
They aren’t worthy of their notoriety. What they did is nothing compared to what I could’ve been: healer, lover, artist, scientist, mother, father, grandparent.  The world is a poorer place without me.

When you look at them with wonder, will you remember me?