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Sat. May 31, 2003

You Can Run, But Only For So Long

You Can Run, But Only For So Long – I have no reason to feel so triumphant this morning. All I did was roll out of bed and read the news: Eric Rudolph may be in custody (local TV is now confirming an FBI fingerprint check is positive … it’s him).

This one is very personal for me. It’s good news that oddly nearly brings me to tears.

The Olympics have been important to me since a very young age, and when they came to my hometown in 1996, I was ecstatic. Then, along came Cowardly Scum, a bomber in the midst of thousands of peaceful celebrants at Centennial Park.

I was crushed, furious, stunned, and uncomprehending. In a way, it was a small taste of what I would feel 5 years later on 9/11. Except I felt it like New Yorkers felt it on that day … this is my town.

We retook the park days later during the Olympics. Rudolph continued bombings (4 total) that supposedly were due to his anti-abortion and/or anti-gay feelings, attested by his membership in and support from the “Army of God.”

Americans, claiming to be Good Christians, killing in the name of God.

Well, if you want to kill in the name of your God, before you face His judgement, you get to face it here on Earth, from the society of your peers. You get to look Alice Hawthorne’s family in the face, and see how her innocent daughter is coping with having no mother for the past 7 years. You get to face Emily Lyons, so disfigured by Rudolph’s bomb that her own husband did not even recognize her.

And you made the morning of people like me, who woke up and joyfully exclaimed, “they finally caught that sorry son of a bitch.”