a placeless world

There was an understanding in William Plott's eyes. A look that said more than the aging man ever could.

He hardly knew Kimball and Beata Jencks. For three years he lived across the street from the couple, but he'd never so much been in their home.

Such is the nature of neighbors, these days.

But Plott knew something. Something that, on Wednesday evening as he watched the news, quickly led him to the belief that it was his neighbors whose bodies police were removing from a third-floor room in the north tower of Cottonwood Hospital. A "murder-suicide," investigators said.

And he was content.

Content that they'd gone the way they wanted to go — even before he learned that Beata had indeed written a note confirming she and her husband had chosen this path together.

The impulse to call Kimball's actions a "mercy killing" was already there for Plotts and others who shared this quiet, gently curving street with the elderly couple.

Well into his 80s, Kimball was often seen mowing his large front lawn — with a push mower. It was assumed he did the same in the back yard, where a lush patch of green stretches back in a shape roughly the size of the house itself.

He was proud of his yard. Too proud too let someone else handle its care. But he'd recently hired a service to do just that.

Beata — who was every bit as proud of her small garden of white, yellow and red roses and often was seen picking plums from a tree in her front yard — hadn't been seen in weeks.

And so they all suspected the couple's health was declining.

And as no one on Kenwood Drive could imagine Kimball without Beata or Beata without Kimball, no one seemed particularly surprised by the couple's decision to leave this world together.

Or angry. Or condemning.

Or anything other than understanding.

Those who oppose physician assisted suicide — most notably, Attorney General John Ashcroft — claim the practice is unnecessary.

Pain can be medicated. Bills can be written off. And, most of all, life — precious life — can be sustained.

Those who wish for their own deaths — or support a family member's wishes — are indited by so-called pro-lifers as weak, immoral, ignorant and or wrongfully worried about becoming a burden.

What would Ashcroft say about Kimball and Beata Jencks? And what would he say to their neighbors, who described the couple as educated, highly moral, hard working and extremely thoughtful.

This was not a couple worried about becoming a burden on anyone. They had no one to burden.

No children. No grandchildren. And perhaps no relatives in the entire United States.

They had no bills to worry about.

He was a military veteran with an Ivy League education. She was a retired professor with a university pension and a bank account padded by a extremely popular book.

A few years back, they bought the home next door — simply to keep it empty and quiet, rather than risk the chance that a family with loud children might move in.

This was not a couple sliding down the "slippery slope of euthanasia."

Nonetheless, they weren't given a choice to make their case.

Which brings us back to the look in Plott's eyes. A look that said he understood their motive. A look that said he could find no blame.

His only regret — one that seems to unanimously be shared in this neighborhood of middle-class families and a generous population of elderly residents — was a simple wish.

"If only there could have been some other way..." Plott said, his voice trailing off as he stared toward the four bushy blue spruce trees that shield his neighbors' home from view.

Of course, there is. But Oregon — the only state in the nation in which physician assisted suicide is legal — is hundreds of miles and an entire world away from this Salt Lake City suburb.

Here, death with dignity means committing a crime.

It means risking a mistake worse than death — or life.

It means looking your wife in the eyes and telling her you love her one last time.

Before shooting her in the head.

American journalists would have done this week well to reflect upon the Buddha's words.

"Believe nothing, O monks, merely because you have been told it… do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher."

The teacher, this week, was Amnesty International. The subject was racial profiling.

And the lesson, as reflected in the headlines, was grim:

"Racial profiling on the rise." -- NPR

"Human rights group says 32 million affected by racial profiling" -- The San Diego Union Tribune

"Profiling on the Rise, Rights Group Says" -- The Washington Post

"Washington's racial profiling law not enough" -- The Seattle Post-Intelligencer

And so on and so forth. From The Chicago Times and The San Francisco Chronicle. From news agency after news agency after news agency — more than 300 of them, by a Google News count — many of which published original stories based on Amnesty's findings.

And none of which seemed to find it important to review the data Amnesty used to draw its conclusions.

Even a cursory look at Amnesty's report would have revealed to the most half-witted of journalists that the well known human rights organization had used absurd extrapolations to arrive at its conclusions.

But Amnesty didn't include the report with its cookie-cutter press releases. And unless you had the audacity to ask for a copy of the report and the tenacity to review the published studies on which it was based, you wouldn't have known the truth.

The truth: Though Amnesty provided journalists a handy "estimate" of the number of people in each state who "reported" being victimized by racial profiling, it conducted no research in 45 states, instead choosing to hold five "congressional-style hearings" — in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Tulsa and Dallas.

What does New York City have in common with Salt Lake City? Tulsa with Tucson? San Francisco with Santa Fe?

Here's a better question: What do 229 people polled by the Kaiser Family Foundation in early 2001 have to say for the nation's entire population of Asians in 2004?

Well, about 25 of them reported feeling victimized — in one way or another — because of their race at some time in their life. That's 11 percent.

For Amnesty — and the hundreds of journalists who reported its findings — that was close enough to the concept of racial profiling.

For Amnesty — and the hundreds of journalists who reported its findings — that was close enough to assume that 11 percent of Asians in Texas have "reported" being racially profiled.

And 11 percent of Asians in Utah.

And in Vermont.

And in Kentucky.

Amnesty made similar estimates for blacks, Hispanics and — ready for this? — whites!

Yup. Whites. In a recent George Washington University survey of 1,792 people, 3 percent of white respondents reported that they felt they had been victims of racial profiling.

For Amnesty — and the hundreds of journalists who reported its findings — that was close enough to assume that 3 percent of whites in Florida have "reported" being racially profiled.

And in California.

And in Pennsylvania.

By Amnesty's estimate, white victims alone in those three states alone comprise 1.8 million victims of racial profiling.

One university statistician with whom I spoke called Amnesty's estimates "stupid, silly and insulting."

Which, he quickly pointed out, is not the same as saying that Amnesty's contentions about racial profiling are stupid, silly or insulting.

Indeed, civil rights activists across the United States generally agree that race-based policing has taken a turn for the worse since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. They say that turn has adversely affected Arab Americans — something Amnesty said was very clear from the testimony in its hearings.

Amnesty, of course, reported the problem as statistical fact. In fact — according to its own report — it did not specifically count Arabs in its report.

No matter to the journalists who wrote the next day's stories — nary a mention could be found of the fact that Amnesty had declined to survey the population it says is currently at greatest risk of being racially profiled.

In that Amnesty International is — in part — an organization dedicated to finding and reporting truth, it should be ashamed of the way it conducted its research and presented its findings.

But in that journalists are — in whole — supposed to be dedicated to the finding and reporting of truth, we should all feel humiliated.

Ultimately, both failures will have done a great disservice to the cause of anti-profiling activism. And that is the greatest failure of all.

He was always uncomfortable with all the fuss. So after awhile, Leslie Jones allowed her son to have it his way.

Instead of signs and flags and raucous applause at the Salt Lake International security gate, Jones would greet her boy, Lance Cpl. Quinn Keith, at the passenger pick-up curb.

"We'd just circle around and around the terminal and then we'd see him there" Jones says. "He'd just be there, carrying a small backpack. That's how he wanted it."

And that's how she expected it. But staring over the airport tarmac on Tuesday evening, tears falling from beneath her brown sunglasses, Jones is about to experience a very different homecoming.

"I just want to be here to welcome him home," she says. "It's unfortunate it has to be this way. This isn't the way I'd planned. But I still want to greet him."

Baggage handlers dart between broad-winged airliners and under loading ramps. In the bustle, the orange-vested workers might have missed the red van's arrival.

But its passengers — seven U.S. Marines in dress blues — are unusual in this part of the airport. Within moments, their mission becomes clear: A black hearse rolls onto the ramp behind the van.

The carts slow, then stop. The handlers, gathering under a loading ramp, stand still.

"Who is it?" one handler yells to a coworker over the roar of jet engines.

"Another Marine," the second handler answers.

Both men set their eyes to the ground.

Overhead, passengers awaiting a flight to San Diego gather at a window. A silver-haired man places his hand over his heart and closes his eyes.

"We see a lot of caskets, you know, doing this job you see a lot of that," says ramp agent Alan Lamm. "But this is the first time I've seen anything like this."

It's not a first for Salt Lake City police officer Patrick Jones. Not a second either.

In fact, Jones believes he has been on duty each time a fallen member of the armed services has passed through Salt Lake International since American forces entered Iraq in March 2003.

And Lance Cpl. Keith's return marked the second time in a week Jones has been called on to escort a flag-draped coffin through the airport.

"I'm usually the tough one, the one who nothing fazes," Jones says. "But that last one really got to me."

The last one — Lance Cpl. Michael Allred — was buried Monday in Hyde Park. Allred was killed in the same suicide bomb attack that claimed Keith's life.

The uniformed Marines gather near the front cargo hold of the 737 docked at Gate C-11.

An empty white cardboard box — the size and shape of a coffin — follows some postal boxes down the ramp. Moments later, Keith's silver, flag-draped casket becomes visible.

The sight of the coffin sends Leslie Jones into the arms of her fiancé, James LaSelute. To their right, Keith's 11-year-old cousin, Tre Deal, sobs.

As the casket comes to rest at the bottom of the ramp, the boy — who has been instructed by his mother to say goodbye to his cousin on behalf of his entire family — approaches. He reaches up and touches the casket and bows his head. Other family members do the same.

The tarmac remains still. The San Diego-bound passengers, now assuming their seats in a nearby 737, look out the port-side windows. Several wipe tears from their eyes. One woman folds her hands before her face in prayer.

Four people are standing, hands over hearts, as the Hearse exits the tarmac gate. Two wave American flags.

The sight prompts a new round of tears from Keith's family members.

"We just wanted to do for Lance Cpl. Keith what others have done for our family," says Brett Allred, father of the Marine whose body made the same trip through Salt Lake International just days earlier.

"He's a hero," Allred says of Keith. "And we wanted to welcome him home as a hero. To welcome him home with honor."

Shivering in front of the airport police station, the hearse carrying her son's body parked nearby, Leslie Jones is still fantasizing about the homecoming she had hoped for.

"This is so hard for me and for my family," she says. "This is not the way it should have happened. But I will be strong for him and carry on."

After all, the grieving mother reasons, her son was always uncomfortable with all the fuss.