I had two very important interactions with readers yesterday.
Usually these are not especially pleasant encounters. There are basically two kinds of people who contact newspapers - people who desperately want to get something into the paper, or those who desperately want to keep something out of the paper, and failing to do that, to bitterly complain about the way they have been treated.
Yesterday's was neither of those.
The first voice-mail I received was from Monica Foley.
Who is she?
She just happens to be the mother of Marc Hanly. He is the Ridley Park police officer who was shot twice in an encounter with a suicidal man in Norwood.
She did not want to complain about the fact that her son's name was all over the newspaper. She wanted to thank me.
She had read the blog item I posted early yesterday morning concerning the fact that first and foremost, we are grateful that Hanly is going to be OK.
I called her back and talked to her for a few minutes. I told her I hoped our coverage had not been too intrusive, something we're often accused of when covering these kinds of stories.
She recounted for me the harrowing minutes after she heard of the shooting and how she raced down MacDade Boulevard trying to get to Crozer-Chester Medical Center, where her son had been rushed after the shooting.
"I think I ran every light on MacDade," she told me. I joked how that gives her something in common with everyone else on MacDade.
It touched me that a person dealing with what she was going through would take the time to call a newspaper editor to thank him for a story he wrote. And it again reminds me of this sacred trust, the bond we share with our readers every day.
The second interaction I had yesterday was a letter we received from Carole Nasella.
She is the wife of Jim Nasella, Marc Hanly's partner. They've been a team for almost 10 years.
That team almost was broken up by a bullet early Sunday morning.
Hanly is alive today because of his bulletprof vest.
Carole Nasella used the occasion to urge citizens to make sure the officers in their towns have these crucial life-saving devices.
I was so moved by her letter that I decided to run it alongside our lead story on the shooting today.
You can read the letter here. She is right.
She urged local communities to find money in their budget to outfit their officers with bulletproof vests.
She could not be more right.
Great letter, Carole. I couldn't have said it better myself.
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