Bush was right: We must revive `family values'

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

The phrase has taken a beating in the last few weeks.

Say the words, "family values" and your commercial value plummets. It's safer to be snide, easier to drag out Ozzie and Harriet and sneer, "Yah, but look what happened to them!" It's far more fashionable to denigrate the notion of family than to think about what family really is.

Family is not Ozzie and Harriet.

Family is not homemade dinners and apple pie.

Family is not Mom and Dad, two kids, a dogand a station wagon.

This is pure Hollywood fiction.

Family is simply real people caring for one another.

Two people. Ten people. Ten thousand people. Married and unmarried. Young and old. Related or unrelated. Together or apart.

Craig and Lowell are family. They have been for 15 years. They care about each other. They care for each other.

Caryn and John, Michele, Kerry and Sarah are family.

Last Saturday, Michele married Rich so now he is part of her family, part of Nana and Papa, George and Patty and their kids; Susan and Mike and their kids, Pam and Steve and their kids; Cheryl and Roger. And now she is part of his family, too.

But they are both part of a much larger family. Their close friends are family. Their church is family. All the people who've watched them grow up, who've been in the grandstands cheering them on as they learned to ride a bike, catch a ball, drive a car; showing up at school concerts and prom nights; phoning just to say hi; commiserating when they were sick; smiling when they were happy; hurting when they were sad. All the people who've shared and continue to share their lives. Carol, Susie, Cheryl, Aldine, Cathy.

The list could go on and on.

Family values. What are they? Caring is the main one, sharing both good times and bad.

Michele and Rich's wedding was the sharing of a good time. Family enfolded them. Four-year-olds mingled with 80-year-olds; relatives mingled with friends. One hundred and fifty individuals became one, united by their feelings for the bride and groom. That's what happens with family. You're happy when someone you love is happy. With family you are part of a whole.

The other night at the Massachusetts Hospital School in Canton, 13 students graduated. Most wheeled themselves down a long ramp and up onto a stage; a few walked with crutches.

Every one of them spent their childhood at the school. It was here they learned and grew.

Their families were in the audience to celebrate the occasion. But so were dozens of people who taught them, and people who knew them, and people who didn't know them at all, but only knew about them, and were there to applaud their success and to wish them well.

Here, too, was family. Strangers united, disparate people became one bonded by their mutual caring.

There's a hunger for this bonding in each of us. A need to be part of something bigger than we are. A need to belong to something and to someone. We come from the womb and all our lives we seek in other people the perfect unity we found there.

Family gives us that unity. Flesh and blood family. A family of friends. A family of classmates. A family of co-workers. That's why family values are so important. Because our families shape and define us.

"We need a moral, spiritual revival in our nation so that families unite, fathers love mothers, stay together in spite of pain and hard times because they love their children and look forward to another generation growing up tall and confident in the warmth of God's love," President Bush said a few weeks ago.

For these words Bush has been reviled. But he spoke the truth. This country is a family, too. United we can do anything. Pulling together we can grow.