Such A Loss, So Quickly Suffered: President Lech Kaczynski

Awaking to the news this a.m., it was a jolt. One plane crash, and a significant proportion of the leadership of Poland is lost.

Lech Kaczynski was not a name on most Western lips or minds. For most of us here in the US, eastern Europe is 'over there somewhere'.


In the sixty years he was granted, he wasted no time, and took great risks on behalf of the nation he loved; seeking to see it freed from Communism, and living as a stable and free nation.


He served as a key advisor to Solidarity, which was the first event in a process that finally kicked the legs out from under the Soviet Empire.


It is moving to see Poland mourn. Only a heart of stone does not grieve with them.

It is heartening to see what isn't happening. Troops in the barracks. No one is erecting barricades and beginning a riot. The crowds filing into the center of Warsaw bear flowers, not bricks.


Contrast these events with what occurs in other places in times of sudden change or stress. Greece comes to mind...or the USA...

We may have something to learn from Poland. How did they achieve this civic dignity, emerging from such a long, brutal twentieth century?