One of our community members is a regular contributor to 30-Second Read Random thoughts, anecdotes and specks of whimsy. In 180 words.

Emily Toth, also a member of our Thursday Night Zoom Visits wanted to share her recent column with the NOSHA community: How many many children must die? 

I was in fifth grade when I first knew a kid who was dying.

Howie Katz was my classmate at Hazeldell Elementary School in Cleveland, and he’d written a song: “My Heart Is Like a Frisky Lamb.”

The last line, with a stunning high note, praised “great wonders to be SEEN.” It sounded like “What a Fool BELIEVES,” decades later.

But by then Howie Katz, a handsome child with dark curly hair, was long dead.

After we’d performed his song in choir, we learned he had leukemia.

Youngsters rarely died in my world. There were prom night wrecks, or musicians who went to rock ’n’ roll heaven at 27. We knew about Anne Frank, waiting for death yet believing that people are “really good at heart.”

But now I see, in my own city, parents disrupting government meetings to protest against masks. They roar against vaccinations.

Do they want their children to die?

Howie Katz’s parents would have been horrified. So am I.

I wonder: How many deaths will it take till they know that too many children have died?

Feel free to follow her and make a comment directly if you are so inclined. We appreciate her contribution to The Humanist Advocate!