Just a quick note to remind everyone - this is not a discussion on capitol punishment, I don't need you to quote the bible for me, and for the love of my laptop, please do not get started on politics. Be respectful, this is my grandmother and if you think I lose my shit over
someone screwing with my kids, sit back and watch what will happen when it comes to my grandma. I'm sharing this because she is just too cute for words. I mean, how can you not love a woman who calls herself an old bag?
from the Lincoln Journal Star...
Norma and her Toyota take on the death penalty in Nebraska
DAVID CITY -- Norma Fleisher has finished her soft serve at the
Runza on Fourth Street. She's wearing her Summer of 2011 uniform --
SAS shoes, faded jeans, black fanny pack and one of two matching
T-shirts she washes out at night in motel room sinks.
They say: Abolish the Death Penalty.
It's Sunday, Day 25, County 73.
Her weathered Nebraska map -- taped in the Sandhills, ripped
just below Loup City -- is spread across the table in the Butler
County seat while the after-church hungry and the shorts-wearing
young fill up on burgers and fries.
Her '92 Tercel is parked out front, a magnetic sign on each
white door with words to match her shirt.
She's ready for a nap, the 84-year-old Lincoln woman says. A nap
and then on to Seward by supper time. County 74.
Most summers, the great-great-grandmother would be home tending
her tomatoes. But last year, she decided to do this instead: Visit
each of Nebraska's 93 counties with a message.
A message she couldn't have delivered 20 years ago: The death
penalty is wrong.
***
On June 15, Norma backed out of her driveway and headed north.
She was in Wahoo by noon, ready for lunch at the Dairy Queen on
North Chestnut Street.
She had dinner in Fremont at 6. The next morning, off to West
Point for breakfast. Lunch on the Pender courthouse lawn and then
back to the second of many DQs to come -- this time for dinner, and
this time in Wayne.
8 a.m. Noon. 6 p.m. Same routine, day after day.
She carries peanut butter crackers in the Toyota and Cheez Whiz
and store brand Pop Tarts for towns without cafés. She totes Diet
Mt. Dew by the 12-pack.
If she doesn't have an invite, she dines alone, parking the car
where folks will see her signs. She keeps a journal in
chicken-scratch pencil and reads while she waits for someone to
take notice.
Sunday, she paws through a tote bag in her front seat for the
novel she's reading now, "Fools Crow" by James Welch.
She's gone through all the books she brought, she says. Six so
far.
She checks in with her son every night. She checks in with the
Lord all the time.
***
Norma was glad to see Nebraska execute Charlie Starkweather in
1959.
Her husband carried a shotgun when he picked up two of their
kids from school the day the bandy-legged murderer committed his
last Lincoln crimes and fled west.
She was still in favor of the death penalty when she retired as
a CPA in 1991 and decided to head to Africa as a missionary for the
United Methodist Church.
The church sent her to Nashville instead. Said she wasn't suited
for a Third World country, the small woman with soft white hair and
gold-rimmed glasses explains.
"I wanted to suffer for our Lord, but my biggest hardship was
when they didn't have frozen yogurt in the cafeteria."
She spent more than seven years at the Scarritt-Bennett Center
dedicated to educating laity, eliminating racism and empowering
women.
She served as the retreat center's accounting manager.
She served by visiting prisons, too, even though she didn't want
to.
She'd started going to one of the three nearby Methodist
churches. The controversial one, Norma says, in a poor neighborhood
that believed what Jesus preached in Matthew 25.
Norma always had trouble with that chapter.
"I was OK feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, but when it
came to visiting prisoners, I thought, ‘Why did Jesus want me to do
that?' "
Dalinda was the first person she met behind bars -- an African
American, HIV-positive, schizophrenic.
"She had the biggest heart," Norma said.
After that, Abu, on death row for killing a drug dealer. He's
still in prison, Norma says, his case still under appeal. She went
back to Nashville in 2001 to testify on his behalf.
"I told them all the good things he was doing for himself and
the community."
That story isn't the first thing she tells strangers on her
travels through Nebraska.
If she only has a small window, she starts with money.
It costs a lot more to kill someone, Norma says, than it does to
keep him alive and in prison for life.
***
Back in Nebraska in 1999 -- after her time in Tennessee -- Norma
joined Nebraskans Against the Death Penalty. She became a regular
at its weekly vigils.
"We sit for what we stand for," she says with a smile, the
curved handle of her cane resting between her knees.
Last summer, the idea that led her to David City on this steamy
Sunday started to take shape.
She was sitting in front of the Governor's Mansion when Sally
Ganem came out, curious.
The first lady asked questions, and then she listened.
"Being a bleeding heart liberal, I'm not in favor of much of
what our governor stands for, but I sure do like his wife."
A few minutes later, a man on a motorcycle stopped. They had a
nice chat, too. Norma didn't change his mind, and he didn't change
hers.
But it got her thinking. Here she was in Lincoln, where
lawmakers gather and citizens hold rallies calling attention to
their causes -- death penalty opponents included.
What about the rest of the state? Who was getting the word out
in Burwell? Or Franklin? Fullerton or Stanton?
Then she thought, "You old bag you, you aren't doing anything.
Why don't you go?"
***
Last winter, after she'd highlighted all of the county seats in
blue on a new map, she wrote letters to churches -- giving
preference to the Methodists -- wondering if they'd be willing to
host a potluck or a coffee where she could share her message.
"I reminded them that the United Methodist Church is against the
death penalty and our bishop is against the death penalty."
Last month, two nuns went to see her off that first day in
Wahoo. A couple in Wayne gave her a bed for the night. Another
couple -- a retired minister and teacher -- bought her meatloaf and
mashed potatoes in Grand Island.
Albion had a breakfast for her. Six adults and a 5-year-old
showed up in Grant. One man came to a salad luncheon at the church
in Rushville. His 28-year-old son had been murdered in Phoenix
three years ago.
"That took the wind out of my sails."
A fellow death penalty opponent, the brother of a Lincoln woman
murdered in 1980, went to see her in Central City.
On the small-town streets, people have been civil, she says.
Some avoid eye contact, some smile. A few tell her they like her
shirt.
When she has an audience, she tells them what she thinks
executions do to us, as a society.
"We are hiring someone to take a life."
She tells them America is the only industrialized country to
execute people. She tells them Iowa does not have the death
penalty, but has fewer murders per capita.
She tells them it costs "three to 10 times more" to execute
someone than to keep him or her in prison for life.
"If I see them losing interest I usually quit. I don't want to
make enemies."
***
Her mom was always fiscally conservative, Nancy Kail says.
Washing bread wrappers, reusing foil, refusing to raise Nancy's
allowance without a good reason.
And it was the cost of executions that originally changed Norma
Fleisher's mind.
"Then, of course, she learned more and that some of the time
they're not even guilty."
They're all proud of their mom, Norma's oldest daughter
says.
"All of us kids agreed, we didn't want her to do it, but we also
knew better than to even attempt to talk her out of it."
An 84-year-old lady in a car with 125,000 miles that has been
rolled once?
Norma understands.
"I've always called it ‘my hare-brained idea.' "
***
Sunday, after Runza and her afternoon nap and dinner at 6 with
her grandson at Amigo's in Seward, Norma heads for home and nine
days of rest.
Then a final push. She'll swing west to York, Aurora, Clay
Center, Hebron. Then south and east to Fairbury, Beatrice,
Tecumseh. The One Stag Café in Falls City. The Avenue Grill in
Nebraska City.
And up north to Papillion, one last Runza.
Since June 15, she's put 3,200 miles on the car she bought new
nearly 20 years ago. She's seen more of Nebraska than she ever had
before or will after.
She knows she's blessed to be making the journey.
She doesn't know if she has changed a single mind.
