Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 2, 1994 TAG: 9401020186
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Jerry SCHWARTZ Associated Press
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A 2-year-old boy was abducted from a busy Liverpool shopping mall and killed by two 10-year-olds. Seven homeless boys were massacred on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. Three children died as a result of tainted hamburgers in Washington State.
At year's end, in Petaluma, Calif., there were tears for Polly Klaas, a little girl plucked from her own bed by a murderous intruder.
And children were consumed by fire in Waco, Texas, in David Koresh's inferno.
"Do not do this to those people! This is not the way to end it!" cried FBI agent Byron Sage, as the first flames emerged.
But 51 days after the standoff began with an inept raid and the deaths of four federal agents, this is exactly how it ended - with an apocalypse, ignited by a messianic madman. The Branch Davidian compound was in ashes, and Koresh and more than 80 adherents were dead.
Among them: at least 17 children.
So we must list children among the victims of 1993, a year when the victims were heartbreakingly apparent and victors were harder to come by.
Indeed, the victims were innumerable - six Long Island Rail Road commuters, gunned down by a man with a lethal chip on his shoulder; four shot dead in an Oxnard, Calif., unemployment office; eight foreign visitors to Florida; abortionist Dr. David Gunn, shot by an abortion opponent.
In Somalia, Marine Pfc. Domingo Arroyo, 21, was the first to die in a mercy mission that went terribly wrong; in early October, Americans watched in revulsion as another U.S. soldier's body was mutilated and dragged through the streets of Mogadishu. Enough, President Clinton said - we're leaving.
We didn't even go to the former Yugoslavia. Instead, the United States and other powers sent ultimatums and humanitarian aid, and the death toll rose to more than 200,000 men, women and children, and the misery was unending.
"Boredom! Shootings!!! Shells!!! People being killed!!! Desperation!! Starving!! Misery!! Terror!!! This is my life, the life of an innocent 11-year-old schoolgirl," wrote Zlata Filipovic, in a diary published in 1993.
For an instant - at 12:18 p.m. Friday, Feb. 26 - international terror visited the United States. At that moment, a bomb planted in a Ford Econoline van ripped through Level 2 of the World Trade Center's parking garage, leaving a 200-foot-by-100-foot crater.
Six people died and 1,000 others were injured. Thousands struggled to find their way down as many as 100 floors, through smoke and darkness.
Seventeen kindergartners from P.S. 95 in Brooklyn and their teacher, Anne-Marie Tesoriero, were stuck in an elevator for five hours. They whiled away the time by singing the "Barney" theme song: "I love you, you love me . . ."
Within days, the arrests began - Muslim fundamentalists, allegedly led by a blind cleric, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman. Authorities alleged a conspiracy to murder and kidnap and to bomb other New York landmarks.
Somehow, the arrests made Americans feel more vulnerable, not safer. Had the terrorist genie been let out of the bottle on these shores?
This was the nation that Bill Clinton had inherited barely a month before.
Clinton was neither a winner nor a loser in 1993 - or rather, he was both.
Inaugurated on a sun-dappled Washington day - his 14-minute speech a remarkable feat for a man who tends to use 10 words where three might do - he immediately fell into a series of misfortunes.
A promise to admit gays to the military ran into a political buzzsaw, transforming it to a policy of "don't ask, don't tell" and satisfying nearly nobody. Two successive choices for attorney general, Zoe Baird and Kimba Wood, were caught up in controversies over aliens they employed in their households.
Congress tossed aside his economic stimulus package; a fancy haircut on the Los Angeles Airport tarmac brought derision; he dropped Lani Guinier, his nominee for assistant attorney general for civil rights. And his popularity rating fell to 36 percent, a record low for a new president.
But then . . .
His ultimate choice for attorney general, Janet Reno, could have been destroyed by the Waco fiasco, but emerged a hero by accepting responsibility. His budget passed. His Supreme Court nominee, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, won almost unanimous applause. He won the fight over the North American Free Trade Agreement, with a little help from Al Gore and Ross Perot. At long last, the Brady bill became law.
The economy didn't catch fire - in recent months alone, companies like Philip Morris (14,000 jobs) and Xerox (10,000 jobs) announced cutbacks - but low interest rates kept the recovery going.
And Clinton drew strength from his wife. Hillary Rodham Clinton revolutionized the concept of first lady. Sure, she planned the White House redecoration. But she also quarterbacked the administration's most important project - a health-care proposal breathtaking in its complexity and ambition.
It was in Clinton's backyard that Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin shook hands, signing an accord in which the Palestinians renounced warfare against Israel and the Israelis promised autonomy for the Palestinians.
"Enough of blood and tears. Enough," said Rabin.
"The children of Abraham, the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael, have embarked together on a bold journey," said Clinton. "We bid them shalom, salaam, peace."
Of course, it wasn't so simple - violence escalated, wrangling persists.
But at least war is something a leader can do something about, unlike accidents, such as the derailment of Amtrak's Sunset Limited into an Alabama bayou, killing 47 people; unlike natural disasters, such as the Southern California fires that burned 200,000 acres and 1,000 homes, or the earthquake that killed nearly 10,000 people in India.
And unlike the flooding that inundated the Upper Mississippi Basin. More than 40 people died, tens of thousands were forced from their homes, millions of acres of prime farming soil were washed away. The water covered 17 million acres, an area roughly twice the size of New Jersey.
Some called it a once-in-500-years flood - and it seemed to last 500 years.
"We just can't take it anymore," cried Cristina Hein, a Des Moines computer operator. And Bill Clinton hugged her. "Hang in there," he said.
There were heroes amid the flood waters - neighbors and volunteers from far away and even prisoners who loaded or piled sandbags, or helped clean up.
Kenneth Keller battled for the levee at Canton, Mo.: "The feeling of pride and people working together - I don't expect to see anything like that again."
But in 1993, these uplifting stories were often lost amid the dreck.
Michael Jackson, accused of molesting boys, checked into drug rehab; three TV movies retold the story of Amy Fisher and Joey Buttafuoco; Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood madam, became a celebrity (for 14 minutes); a video game, Mortal Kombat, ended with the victor ripping the heart out of the vanquished.
Prince Charles and Diana were exposed in embarrassing taped conversations; Howard Stern turned his rant into a best seller; MTV's Beavis and Butt-Head set new standards for moronity; a group of California boys, the Spur Posse, was accused of keeping score of how often they scored with girls; with the slice of a knife, Lorena and John Bobbitt made domestic and medical history; Jack Kevorkian continues to make another kind of medical history.
Meanwhile, real history marched on.
In Russia, Boris Yeltsin battled hard-liners. South Africa continued down the road to democracy. Japan struggled with a limping economy, and voted out the incumbents of nearly four decades. Italy was ripped by scandal, and shocked by the bombing of its great museum, the Uffizi. Colombia terminated drug lord Pablo Escobar.
AIDS continued its lethal advance. A rodent-borne hantavirus killed more than two dozen people across the Southwest.
Even in the world of sports - usually a diversion - reality intruded. Michael Jordan, shaken by his father's murder, walked away from basketball at the height of his career. Monica Seles was forced to the sidelines when a fan stabbed her in the back during a tennis match.
And in the Midwest, a long battle for a little girl came to an end. Jan and Roberta DeBoer wanted to adopt the 29-month-old girl they called Jessica; Dan and Cara Schmidt, her birth parents, wanted her back, though Cara had once renounced her rights to her daughter.
The Schmidts won. The last time we saw Jessica, she was sitting in a car seat in the back of a van, wrested from one set of parents to another.
"Mommy!" she wailed, her face full of a toddler's pure fear and anguish. "I want my dad. Where's my dad?"
There were no heroes, no villains. Just another child victim.
Keywords:
YEAR: 1993
by CNB