Thursday, June 5, 2003 | 9:11 a.m.
I WENT to a funeral yesterday. It was uplifting.
Nevada's Gov. Kenny Guinn has called the Legislature into special session. The whole idea of such a thing is depressing. Is the world upside down?
The mother of Steve and Kenny Wynn, Zelma Wynn, died this week. Her funeral service, like her life, played to a packed house Wednesday. Phyllis McGuire sang "It's a Wonderful World" and, in doing so, sounded a lot like the late, great Louis Armstrong -- the way Zelma wanted it -- and those in attendance celebrated a life well and long lived.
There were tears, to be sure, all of them sincere because they were meant for one of those special people you meet along the way of life whose heart is big and whose sense of caring and devotion to others sets the kind of high water mark that we generally wish we could reach ourselves.
That was Zelma.
At the same time, the members of the 2003 Nevada Legislature were meeting in special session because they couldn't or wouldn't do the work they had signed on for when they asked the public to elect them to their positions of responsibility. There are many reasons for their disappointing performance, but most of them can be summed up in a word or two: cowardice and greed.
The cowardice belongs to the legislators who couldn't bring themselves to the realities of the 21st century in Nevada and beyond the fear that they might be punished by the voters for doing the right thing. The greed belonged to some of Nevada's previously respected business people who were thinking not of their employees and their colleagues, but only of themselves.
I couldn't help thinking about the irony of the two events occurring simultaneously because the message of one -- which is what made America great -- seemed totally lost on those in whose hands the people of this state have entrusted much of our future.
Steve spoke about his mother's humble beginnings. Others used well-known phrases like "always remembering where she came from." The message was clear. Zelma Wynn was one of those people -- you know, from that Greatest Generation -- who made all of what we have today possible. That's what makes it so difficult to understand what is going on in Carson City.
It is not my purpose to mix up the funeral service and celebration of Zelma's life with the tawdriness of what is or isn't happening in Carson City. But somehow, I think, she would want me to do this very thing because if there was one trait that defined that woman it was her outspoken insistence on having the last word. Especially about matters of such great import like what kind of state Nevada will be in the coming decades.
Her sons spoke eloquently of Zelma's optimism and her ability to always find the good in other people and befriend them because of that goodness. Steve remarked on the source of that optimism. It was then that I realized something is dramatically wrong with the rest of us.
She was born in Maine, the daughter of recent immigrants to this country who came with nothing and had nothing throughout a large part of their lives. As a teenager she lived through the Great Depression followed shortly thereafter by World War II. If ever a life could start at the bottom and go down from there, it was epitomized by the kind of world in which Zelma and others like her grew up.
And yet, in her grew a sense of optimism that has defined her generation. A sense of caring for others, a responsibility for those less fortunate and an understanding that helping the least amongst us helps us all.
She raised her family that way, as did most parents of that generation, and the result has been my generation -- the wealthiest, most technologically advanced and the most comfortable of all American generations ever.
So what happened? The people who represent us in Carson City and those who are pulling the strings of many of them have forgotten where they, or more specifically, their parents and grandparents came from. The single most important life lesson has been lost.
We did not grow up in abject poverty. We did not have to face possible annihilation by a world super-powerful fanatic bent on destroying all. We did not have to leave families for years at a time and work entirely for the benefit of the next generation. No, this generation has had it pretty easy.
That's not a bad thing but what is bad is that some of us have forgotten. We have lost our optimism. The kind that comes to people like Zelma who had nothing but hope and used it to overcome real difficulty. Some of us have turned greedy, turned selfish and turned away from the notion that we are all in this thing together.
That's the only way to explain the failure of the Legislature to reach the right decision in the time allotted. We will soon know if that point can be reached where the right thing will be done, when courage supplants cowardice and where people who take an oath to serve the public do that before they serve themselves.
We said goodbye Wednesday to a wonderful woman whose life was a lesson in doing right by others. It was also about having the last word.
Zelma, you have now had the last word on this subject. For the sake of all Nevadans, I hope those folks in Carson City were listening.
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