The people in your neighborhood
Do you know Linda Jordan? Linda Jordan is the director of Duke Community Bereavement Services, and runs the Unicorn Bereavement Center in Hillsborough (just across from the hockey rink). The center is open to anyone in the Triangle community who has experienced a loss due to death, Duke Community Bereavement Services offers this kind of expertise to individuals, health care and Emergency Medical Services professional personnel, and to private companies and corporations. Linda specializes in grief and trauma counseling and has been a mentor to me in dealing with the emotional elements of my sister's death. She has also acted as a great advisor in helping strategize my approach to victim advocacy.
Now it just so happens that I was introduced to Linda by Caroline Hutchison, the chief of police for the town of Carrboro, AND I came to know Caroline after I purchased the "hell-house" > (which triggered an emotional reaction concerning the 25-year mystery of the death of my sister - yada, yada, yada - you get where I'm going here). So, it's funny how life has a strange way of taking its course.
Anyway, on to the point of this post. Last week a reporter from the Herald Sun contacted me to do a story about this whole Dalzell/Deborah Key/my-dead-sister thingy. My initial reaction was, no, my life is not a freak-show for your amusement, but them I thought, well... you've got the blog... you've been in the papers before... since when was modesty and good taste ever an issue for you? So eventually I agreed to do it for two reasons:
1. If the paper would make the focus of the article victim awareness, the work of Linda Jordan and the Bereavement Center, and the upcoming conferences and workshops that I'm involved with, then I agreed we could talk a little bit about Theresa's murder and the creepy-house.
2. The article is just a dry-run for a much bigger story that is coming out in the Canadian national media before the end of the year; I needed to see if I was still capable of putting my ideas across, and avoid sounding too much like an idiot (we'll see about that one).
All this is a big-winded way of saying that I'm having tremendous second-thoughts about this article that's coming out tomorrow in the Herald (Hey, they're reporters, the odds are they'll make me look like an idiot). Yesterday they took my picture (I insisted they do a photo of me and Linda Jordan together). We were out at the Bereavement Center. I tried some small talk with the photographer:
- "So, I guess this work keeps you busy..."
- "Oh yeah, I just did some shots this morning of a sheriff who sidelines as a magician."
Oh, great, me and the magician-sheriff: slow news week.
Anyway, hopefully this won't blow-up in my face. It's been nice flying under the radar for the last few years. I just hope people will learn about the Bereavement Center and the valuable work they do for the community.
posted by John Allore @ 9/18/2004 07:21:00 AM
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