If you had a choice of color, which one would you choose my brothers? If there was no day or night, which would you prefer to be right?

MARCH 27, 2012: While politicians publicly debate the merits of the No Child Left Behind Act, educators continue to spend countless dollars and man-hours attempting to ensure that no child is left alone with a teacher.

Many high school teachers can tell you about a moment when they were helping a student prepare for a test, or a game, or a school play and suddenly had every bell, whistle and siren go off in their heads screaming: “I am alone with a student. This is not good.” In such cases a teacher's training is kicking in, not just to prevent impropriety, but to also prevent the appearance of impropriety.

However, in this imperfect world, a few teachers reject the training and ignore the sirens. And in the worst of all worst case scenarios, you have what happened in the South Lewis Central School District: a former district teacher, Bryan Barney, led one of his students into a sexual relationship, and in the chaos that ensued, they each committed suicide within 16 weeks of each other.

In our subsequent phone calls from South Lewis residents, and emails we have received in the last few days, there is no unified reaction to our Sunday story about this tragic case. We have heard everything from “thank you” to “how could you be so cruel?” We have heard everything from “what took you so long to report this?” to “this story should have never been written.”

We have been accused of covering up this story for months on behalf of the school district, which one writer alleges knowingly allowed a pedophile to resign in 2010 rather than be prosecuted. Another person has accused the district of allowing the former teacher to entice a second teenager into having sex with him. And a caller accused the paper of printing the story to pander to a group of people who oppose the closure of one of the district's elementary schools, and thus would like to see the South Lewis administration embarrassed.

One “friend” on our Facebook page warns that our story will “start more problems among students and hostility toward this student that ran their mouth to the paper...people will find out who it is.”

In other words, some South Lewis residents in responding to our story are making allegations that are far worse than anything the Times has written.

Blaming others is often the outcome when chaos ensues, and there is no better word to describe the result of having a flawed mentor go after his innocent students. The reputation of a school district can come apart like a cheap suit if it is determined it employed a predator who sexually took advantage of his charges.

But in the end, the blame should be directed at only one person: a teacher who received the same training as every other certified teacher in New York and still put his own cravings ahead of the needs of everyone else.

And north country educators, students and guidance counselors would be wise to see this story as the cautionary tale it is. The story is true. Instead of wishing it would all go away, we should be ever vigilant to ensure it doesn't happen again.

A local school district that shall go nameless (but its initials are Carthage Central School District) says it is doing all that it can to regain the trust of district residents after a series of unfortunate incidents and recent unpleasantness.

To that end, the school board goes into executive session during its regular monthly meetings to discuss sensitive matters. And to legally close its meetings to the public, the board on its monthly agenda provides the following paragraph, with words gleaned from the state’s rules on open meetings:

“Motion to go into executive session to discuss the medical, financial, credit or employment history of a particular person or corporation, or matters leading to appointment, employment, promotion, demotion, discipline, suspension, dismissal or removal of a particular person or corporation.”

Sounds legal, right? Well, to me it didn’t quite pass the smell test. However, since I’ve been a journalist for only 38 years, I’m no expert. So I sent this quote to Bob Freeman, the executive director of the Committee on Open Government, who is paid by New York taxpayers to answer such questions. He writes:

“No, the boilerplate recitation is not ‘legit.’ A motion to conduct an executive session must be sufficiently focused to enable the public to believe that there is, in fact, a proper basis for conducting an executive session. Recent judicial decisions specify that to be so.”

He cited a court ruling last year:

“The Court affirmed Zehner v Board of Education of Jordan-Elbridge Central School District (Onondaga County, December 7, 2010), stating that the Supreme Court:

“… properly determined that respondent violated the Open Meetings Law on three occasions by merely reciting statutory categories for going into executive session without setting forth more precise reasons for doing so. Given the overriding purpose of the Open Meetings Law, section 105 is to be strictly construed, and the real purpose of an executive session will be carefully scrutinized ‘lest the … mandate [of the Open Meetings Law] be thwarted by thinly veiled references to the areas delineated thereunder.”

On the Committee on Open Government website, Freeman writes: “A violation of the Open Meetings Law occurred, the court determined, due to the Board’s failure to ‘identify with particularity the topic to be discussed,’ citing previous decisions, ‘since only through such identification will the purposes of the Open Meetings Law be realized’ (see e.g., Daily Gazette v. Cobleskill; Gordon v. Monticello).”

Freeman is considered a wet blanket by many government officials who don’t want to be restricted from going behind closed doors because a topic might be uncomfortable. For instance, when a school board is working on its budget and decides it must eliminate 15 jobs, board members assume that “jobs” are “personnel” and thus must be discussed privately. Nope, that discussion must be held in the full light of day.

But Freeman is a reasonable person. He further writes: “It is impossible to predict the circumstances surrounding every executive session, and this office has neither the resources nor the inclination to specify language in every situation. Accordingly, we encourage members of public bodies to share more information about their intended topic for discussion in executive session, in a manner that clarifies that the discussions are reasonably within the parameters of the law, and to protect individuals from what might be an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy and/or the government’s ability to function.”

Here’s a guess: In trying to be more official after several months of chaos, Carthage has inadvertently become the poster child for improperly called executive sessions. But singling out one district misses the point; a lot of other districts are doing the same thing, just in more subtle ways.

Here is a gentle reminder to all elected officials, but school boards in particular: If you are routinely going into executive session, you should take the time to review state law. And maybe even drop a line to Bob Freeman coog@dos.ny.govfor clarification.

Because if you embrace vagueness, any member of the public — particularly those irritating folks who might have a bone to pick with you — can take you to court and slam dunk you.

You can climb a mountain, you can swim the sea; You can jump into the fire, but you'll never be free

FEB. 17, 2012: Here is a list of the five worst-run governments in the north country:

Carthage School District, City of Ogdensburg, Town of Cape Vincent, Village of Potsdam, Village of Gouverneur.

On second thought, the five worst-run governments are actually:

Massena School District, St. Lawrence County, Town of Hounsfield, General Brown School District, Town of Lyme.

Of course, a case could also be made for:

Town of Potsdam, City of Watertown, Town of Hammond, Morristown School District, Town of Henderson.

Then again, maybe we should just consider the five worst-run governments on YOUR list.

There are only two kinds of governments in the north country: Those routinely covered by the Watertown Daily Times and those given passing coverage due to their small size and/or geographic isolation. Officials at governments routinely covered by the Times might tell you that the major problem in their lives — loss of citizen respect — would go away if Times reporters would go away as well.

But covered or uncovered, most of our governments have plenty of critics, whose criticism is occasionally fueled by rumors and innuendos. A government might not consider media coverage its best friend, but it is certainly a better friend than speculation.

Is the north country really full of gawd-awful governments? Are acrimony and chaos simply the new normal?

Each year there are more state comptroller’s office reports outlining inefficiency as local governments are finding it harder to hire competent clerks and treasurers who can keep up with ever more stringent accounting regulations. And the sidelight to all this is more small government embezzlement cases each year.

Several NNY school districts now have board meetings that are standing room only with the public in attendance to oppose the direction being taken by board members — the same friends and neighbors the public itself put in office in the first place.

Now add those towns where wind turbines are being proposed. The result is this sobering trend: more and more public officials are telling Times reporters they feel “threatened” by the way in which citizens confront them with complaints.

It’s easy to get the impression that chaos reigns. Recently, the city councils of Ogdensburg and Watertown on the same day voted to part ways with their managers, although they took vastly different routes to reach the same destination.

Last summer in Ogdensburg with an election just months away, some council members began calling for the head of Manager Art Sciorra, even though an investigation to determine what, if anything, Sciorra had done improperly/incorrectly/illegally wasn’t complete. Sciorra is now gone, but not before officials spent months in a circular firing squad attacking the ethics of each other.

As the dust settled, even Ogdensburg officials looked back at their performance this past year and know that as a group they had embarrassed themselves.

But say what you will about Ogdensburg, at least its citizens had the opportunity to express themselves at public meetings and at the ballot box regarding the performance of their manager.

In Watertown, three city council members went the other direction in deciding to give the boot to Manager Mary Corriveau. All three were on the ballot in November, but none of them announced that their first agenda item of 2012 would be to dump Corriveau. Instead, they waited until after the election and then took their blitzkrieg action behind closed doors so that — voila! — no campaign promises were broken and no public input had to be tolerated beforehand.

(Even the greatest sluggers occasionally strike out. Likewise, Corriveau has had her share of swings and misses over the years. But Corriveau is not an incompetent administrator whose continued presence was jeopardizing the city’s future. The vote of the three council members not to renew the contract of an employee with 26 years working for the city came across as clumsy and mean-spirited.)

It would be nice to think that the last year is an aberration rather that a trend. But with state and federal dollars shrinking, more acrimony is on the way. From Congress to state capitols to county governments, we have created layers of governments we can no longer afford, which means government is now turning on itself.

And all that is left is the shouting.

Beatniks and politics, nothing is new. A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view.

JAN. 27, 2012: Those of us of a certain age know the scene from the TV show “I Love Lucy.” Lucy and Ethel are working on an assembly line at a chocolate factory where they must individually wrap each bonbon passing by. But as the conveyor belt speeds up, they are unable to keep pace. Fearful they will be caught allowing unwrapped chocolate to get past them, they begin stuffing pieces in their mouths and other more interesting places.

It was good for lot of laughs in 1952. Such scenes are not so funny in real life.

In 2004 former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld announced he was going to transform the Army – and thus every Army base – so that war could be waged more effectively.

Fair enough. But he announced the change before a final decision was made on national base closures. Which led to the following: Fort Drum was sent another 10,000 soldiers to be shoehorned into our tight housing market, while housing construction firms could not get financing because, alas, what bank is going to sink money into a housing project near an Army base that could be selected for closure?

We can sit here in the north country and repeat the mantra “Fort Drum is too important to close,” all we want. But bankers in Charlotte and Buffalo don't factor in mantras when making multimillion-dollar decisions.

And so the United States foisted on the north country its own bonbon scenario: YOU will take OUR growth while WE will take away YOUR ability to grow.

And the north country has been trying to stuff soldiers anywhere and everywhere ever since.

By the time our community was told Fort Drum was not on the base closure list, the north country had lost an entire construction cycle. Housing construction exploded after that but a couple of years later the economy faltered and construction money evaporated.

Today, the markets are freeing up more money, but we now live in a nation with a growing fear that somebody might make a buck or two building something. And so we fret and ponder about whether we should give a developer a tax break.

Put it all together and instead of three housing projects ready to open later this year in Jefferson County, we have one that is barely started. And those 20,000 soldiers assigned to Fort Drum? For the first time since the Rumsfeld ramp-up, they will all be here at one time by May.

Thursday's news that the Army will soon have fewer soldiers and fewer bases leads to an obvious question: which way is the conveyor belt going now?

Let's not wait. Let's get the talking points out there:

* Fort Drum is not here to pump $1.6 billion into our local economy. It is here for national defense.

* Fort Drum is vital to our national defense because of 20 years of military decisions. Those decisions include building training facilities and expanding Wheeler-Sack Air Field, which allows 10th Mountain Division soldiers to deploy quickly with the skill set necessary to control conditions on the ground.

* Those same military decisions make Fort Drum one-stop shopping for all branches of the military. The Air Force drops dummy bombs there, the Navy has used its facilities for ordnance training and the Marines have trained National Guardsmen in tanks at Fort Drum. Soldiers from nations around the world come to Fort Drum for training.

* Fort Drum and the future of waging war are intertwined. Computer-packing light infantry supported by drones is a reality. That some members of our state's Congressional delegation actually think drones should be based out of Syracuse instead of Fort Drum only proves that these politicians simply see the military as an economic engine rather than the protector of economic engines.

With that understood, we can now have a discussion on the economic impact of Fort Drum. But as the scramble over base closure intensifies, our community does itself no favors by putting the cart before the horse. We do not build housing, etc., so we can make money selling more cars and upping the rent to soldiers. We build because we are the host of a military installation that is vital to protecting our national interests.

All God's children get weary when they roam, don't it make you wanna go home.

DEC, 28, 2011: I don't see dead people, but I do see this:

There is a nonprofit in Watertown whose financial committee met in late December in a semi-panic, not sure if the organization would have enough cash to make payroll in January.

There is another nonprofit in town that has whittled its debt from $40,000 to $18,000 but isn't celebrating because the deep well of resources it has aggressively tapped from its benefactors has just about run dry.

There is another nonprofit in town that recently took on extra programs, or baggage shall we say, and is now taking on water. The agency keeps a happy face on for the public but behind the scenes is bailing as fast as it can.

There is another long-serving nonprofit in town that has been slowly eliminating programs throughout the north country and has no assurance it will be in business in five years.

And there is another nonprofit in town that has such a serious roof and parking lot issue that if it must develop a capital campaign, knowing full well the community is still paying off the capital campaigns of Samaritan Medical Center, the Y and the Carthage library.

This news isn't really new. Three years ago Watertown Times' reporter Nancy Madsen produced a five-part series on nonprofits. Here are the first two paragraphs of the first story:

With little fanfare, north country public charities have relentlessly grown over the past decade into an $800 million industry that employs 12,000 people and serves senior citizens with Alzheimer's disease, uninsured children with autism and everything in between.

But the north country's dependence on nonprofits for services and jobs is being jeopardized by the nation's financial crisis, as 2009 is expected to bring major cuts in government funding and fewer private and corporate donations.

If you add 2010 and 2011 into the second paragraph, you can do some simple math and assume that our nonprofits' financial problems are three times worse than they were in early 2009.

And you can also insert the fact that our local businesses are just about tapped out in how much more they can give. Listen and you can hear the echo: “How many more nonprofits are going to ask me to donate to their golf tournament this year?”

Listen and you can hear individuals mutter among themselves: “I just can't pony up more cash for every semi-formal silent auction they hold around here every week.”

When Will Rogers said, “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat,” he was foreshadowing much of the world we find ourselves in today. The rugged individualism that the internet fosters – we chat but don't speak, we visit but don't meet – is speeding up the fraying of the fabric of our communities.

Sure, we all click on the “Like” button on Facebook. But instead of joining organizations that work to prevent local crises, we simply vow that we will rise to the occasion if a crisis erupts. That sounds fine on paper, except for the paper that lists the declining rolls of volunteer fire departments. Then again, maybe a neighbor's house burning down is no longer considered a crisis to the neighbors.

If our nonprofits go belly up in the coming years, we will blame Obama, Wall Street and China. But is there some way we can bring attention to the issue now? Or would we rather wait for the obit-style headline about the death of a nonprofit and then whine that there is never any good news in the paper?

Because nonprofits belong to no organized party, they have trouble hanging together to avoid hanging separately. Yet is there some way our nonprofits can be linked together so that all the behind-the-scenes stuff, such as payroll, fund appeals, etc., can be consolidated? Is there a way more of them can share a roof and heating bills?

Watching our school districts atrophy as they avoid consolidation is a preview of coming attractions for our nonprofits. But politicians and labor unions can kick the can down the road for several more years to keep governments from facing reality. Our nonprofits can only call United Way and ask for a larger piece of a shrinking pie. The math doesn't work.

If you look at the history of the north country, you learn quickly that many of our nonprofits were created before state and federal financial commitments found them. Our rugged individualism back then was as a rugged individual community.

We might not be that community anymore. And you won't need a sixth sense to see where our nonprofits are headed if we don't find a way to work together soon.

In an upstairs room in Blackpool, by the side of a northern sea, the army had my father and my mother was having me.

DEC. 20, 2011: This summer I offered jobs to two recent college grads. Both accepted.

But each applicant called back about two weeks later and pretty much said the same thing: “I came up there to look for an apartment last week and I can't afford the rent.”

This is one of the backdrops of the recent debate over allowing developers to create Jefferson County housing while paying only a portion of the taxable value of their project for 10 to 20 years. Many people only factor in soldiers when discussing Jefferson County's housing shortage. But the full equation is that private businesses are constantly running into a brick wall because there is little housing available for the professionals they are trying to hire and move here.

Meanwhile, these business leaders have expanded their operations based on the Pentagon's decision years ago to locate a third combat brigade at Fort Drum.

That's why several of them have written to Watertown school board members, begging them to join the county and town of Watertown in approving two proposed “payment in lieu of taxes” agreements with developers who want to build a total of 700 apartments near Watertown.

(And if the truth be known, we need overbuilding. The only thing that can bring rents in line with the local economy is to have at least a 5 percent rental availability, rather than the current rate that can only be found using an atomic microscope).

A few district officials and school board members are firing flak at the proposed PILOT agreement, citing the pending dangers that growth can bring. The dangers are so real, they believe, that they are paying a consultant to produce data to show them how much money the district will lose if growth occurs.

Spending money to avoid losing money is not necessarily a bad idea. But consider some of the data produced by the consultant. Board members are being told that a new 300-apartment complex might produce an additional 300 students, which the district fears it can't afford to transport and educate. But historical data, which is free, can be found at Summit Woods. When it opened a couple of years ago, its 200 apartments produced only 30 students.

Watching this school board blanch at the thought of growth is confusing without some background.

The county legislature and the town of Watertown can afford to slap backs and pop champagne corks as they agree to give tax breaks to developers. That's because the public doesn't vote on their budgets. Conversely, school board members fear that the Occupy Wall Street mantra will spill over to next May's school budget vote. They seriously fear that district residents, who might love to travel to Wall Street and beat up a broker, will conclude they can just stay here and vote down the school budget if the board doesn't beat up an out-of-town developer – He might be a millionaire! – right now.

And, there is this: Unlike school districts, county, city and town governments are financed in large part by sales tax. Occupy Wall Street? Forget about it. They only care about Occupy Walmart, and right now these elected officials are flat-out addicted. If sales tax were crystal meth, our politicians would be gray-skinned, gaunt and toothless.

Need proof? A cadre of community leaders last Thursday – shovels in hand and yakking it up – broke ground on a new COR apartment complex while the school board hadn't even voted on the PILOT agreement yet.

While some school board members believe that more students could bankrupt the district, state and local official listening to the laments just roll their eyes. They have all decided behind the scenes that if the school district even comes close to losing money in the next 10 years, somebody either in Albany or the town of Watertown will just toss a bag of cash over the fence.

And here's why: After losing military bases in Plattsburgh and Rome in the 1990s, the state is not going to chance a similar fate at Fort Drum. And the brass at Drum has sent a very clear message to the Cuomo administration: as long as progress is made to create more housing, we're good. Any serious wavering, as has been shown by the Watertown School Board, and all other options will be considered.

Years ago the Pentagon realized that asymmetrical warfare was the problem and that light infantry was the solution. Through 25 years of vision and funding, the Army has turned Fort Drum into a base that trains many of the rapid response soldiers necessary for the nation's defense. And that defense requires three brigades of combat soldiers living next to a handy runway to anywhere.

So there's the game plan.

It would be wise if all of our community leaders – including the school board — developed a unified vision that is in the best interests of both a growing military base and the nearby businesses affected by that growth.

Everything dies, baby that's a fact; But maybe everything that dies someday comes back.

DEC. 12, 2011: Well, that didn't take long.

Less than a month after winning yet another election as Watertown mayor, Jeff Graham was offering an apology to the mayor of Utica for comments made by a guest on Graham's radio show, the Hotline.

“Let me start by apologizing for the comments about the City of Utica made by my friend and co-worker Johnny Spezzano when he popped into the studio the other day while I did the HOTLINE program on AM-1240 WATN,” the mayor wrote on his blog.

Here's the gist: Spezzano, whose career of misinformation, misrepresentation and mischief are legendary, came on Graham's afternoon radio show recently and said Utica looks like a “junk hole,” and that he has heard that “hookers” hang around the train station. Utica's Mayor, David Roefaro took umbrage at the comments and so Graham invited his mayoral colleague on the air to offer a peace branch.

It was classic Graham: An unforeseen “oops” happened on his show – after all, who could ever possibly predict that Spezzano would say something stupid? – and then Graham quickly and graciously negotiated peace terms with the offended party.

We are so fortunate to have this statesman as mayor!

But let's consider the wattage being burned that day on the Hotline. Here is Spezzano railing about alleged prostitution in Utica when Graham himself recently campaigned for Kristin Davis, the state's major advocate for the legalization of sex-for-money. Here is Spezzano talking about how lousy Utica is when Watertown is full of bumpy streets, hulking empty buildings and overpriced rentals.

Now, if Utica had an employee who for years didn't bill or deposit $100,000 from its recreation department – and had four layers of supervisors not catch it, and had an autopilot mayor shrug his shoulders and just give everyone a pay raise – then I think you'd have a city worth disparaging.

The “my neighbor is a junk hole” mentality is easy to find. Someone in Syracuse thinks Watertown is a junk hole. Someone in Rochester thinks Syracuse is a junk hole. And someone in New York City doesn't even know how to find these junk holes on a map.

And it's that kind of mentality that is also easy to find on talk radio where SOMETHING MUST BE SAID to fill the time when no callers can be found.

It would be nice if such ramblings weren't on the mayor's radio show. But if after 16 years in office you're pretty much campaigning on the theme, “I always show up at ribbon-cutting events,” well, then expectations should be lowered.

What about the rest of the odd squad that fills our local airwaves? Nothing matters because there will always be some agency or nonprofit around here that will run to them whenever they need a voice for promotions.

You see, in Watertown there has always been an ugly truth about radio: We are more enamored with those who sound good instead of those who think soundly.

What's your name? Who's your daddy? Is he rich like me. Has he taken, any time. To show you what you need to live?

JULY 7, 2011: The WDT staff has been on a great roll the past few months.

Reporter Brian Kelly broke the story about the U.S. fisherman who was fined $1,000 for drift fishing in Canada — a story that led to a month-long debate between government officials of both countries.

Reporter Craig Fox was the first reporter to outline the meltdown in the City of Watertown's recreation department, and he also broke the story about the fact that Samaritan Medical Center's assisted living facility was in jeopardy because its proposed construction site is a wetlands.

Brian Amaral broke the story about how union leaders of the New York State Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association fudged the results of an endorsement vote by members to favor Will Barclay over Darrel Aubertine in a state Senate race. For good measure, Amaral also told you that the state's desire to have all businesses electronically file information is running head-on into the Amish community's tradition of not using electricity.

And Nancy Madsen also explained how the debate on wind power would be affected by Article X, which moves the power to approve projects away from local communities and to Albany.

What has made our newsroom's success more remarkable is that for the last two months we have been preparing for a major upgrade in software that will dramatically improve the way we produce our newspaper and website.

Reporters, photographers, editors and production staffs have been in training for weeks to make this conversion beginning Wednesday. Since May staff from our newspapers in Carthage, Lowville, Canton, Ogdensburg, Massena, Potsdam and Malone have been in Watertown as well. The conversion that is occurring here this week will take place at our other newspapers in the coming weeks.

While I would like to tell you that the improvements will be overwhelmingly obvious and wonderful, the truth is that the appearance of the paper is going to regress for a few days as we attempt to properly use all the new bells and whistles. It would be nice to shut down for two weeks, make changes and run tests to ensure everything is working correctly, but daily newspapers do not have that luxury.

When the process is completed for all of our papers this summer, we will be able to move information — stories, photos, advertising — among all of our products with high-speed efficiency. Our staffs will be able to upload stories and images to our websites from anywhere, not just our offices. We will be able to quickly produce locator maps and other key elements for our web stories. We are changing the naming conventions for stories so that they will be easier to find for readers doing Internet searches.

But right now we are sweating bullets over the massive number of changes we must master in the next day. Editors feel as if we've been flying a Piper Cub and are about to be handed the keys to a Boeing 777.

One day the sun will shine and the birds will sing. But right now we are buckling our seat belts because it is going to be a bumpy flight.

Politicians sit yourself down, There's nothing for you here. Won't you please come to Chicago for a ride; Don't ask Jack to help you ‘cause he'll turn the other ear. Won't you please come to Chicago or else join the other side.

JUNE 7: 2011: Stewart MacMillan never cared for my flippancy, as he noted occasionally in some of his 200 letters to the editor that the Times published over the last 20 years.

An example of such flippancy would be this: “Stewart MacMillan was on Omaha Beach during the Invasion of Normandy and he's been mad at God and country ever since.”

But such flippancy had a purpose. I found myself often telling our readers, many of whom thought their heads were going to explode after reading a MacMillan letter, that he had indeed earned the right to express that opinion. Once you say “Normandy,” passions always seemed to cool down.

MacMillan, 87, who died this week, never cared for my opinion and wrote so frequently. He thought I was on the payroll of the evil puppet masters who run the Republican Party, while I once suggested that he lived in the “People's Republic of Guffin Bay.” Of course, that was one flippancy he actually liked, and occasionally he used it himself.

As for war, here is a portion of a story we printed May 29, 2004 regarding the creation of a World War II memorial:

Stewart L. MacMillan, 80, Dexter, served as an Army medic through five campaigns in Europe, from the D-Day landing to the drive into Germany.

He said that although he witnessed a few acts of genuine bravery, most of his fellow soldiers did only what they needed to do to survive.

"I wish they wouldn't say their lives were given — they were taken. Nobody wanted to give their lives over there," Mr. MacMillan said. "You look out for yourself, and if you could help somebody, you did. But most people didn't want to stick their neck out. It's just human nature."

In 1943, Mr. MacMillan had his name put toward the top of the list of potential draftees. Although he said he was "gung-ho" as a 19-year-old soldier, he soon lost his taste for war.

Now a self-described pacifist, Mr. MacMillan is an outspoken critic of war. He hoped the memorial would emphasize peace and not glorify the war.

"I'm afraid that it puts a bit too much emphasis on war as a solution," Mr. MacMillan said. "They're going to show a lot of war mementos. We've had too many bad wars."

A look back at some of MacMillan's 200 letters shows a political conviction that few people can match. And a careful study also shows that while MacMillan always supported the most liberal person on the ballot, that person was generally still not liberal enough to suit his tastes.

And he remained consistently anti-religion. Just last month, within weeks of his meeting, well, MY maker, MacMillan penned this letter to the editor:

“In the far distant past most people did not have a formal education, and supernatural reasons were acceptable. Gods filled the vacuum of knowledge, and Christianity became so entrenched in the lives of its adherents that it is a sin to disclaim it even with today's well-educated Christians... So I believe that there are infinitely more atheists that are not openly so simply because it would hurt their economic or political lives. It probably will take about five more generations before religion is only the view of a tiny majority of poorly educated adherents.”

His final letter was just printed last week. And he went down swinging. Here is a portion of it:

So, please consider the following examples of the questionable logic of our lawmakers: While the poor and middle class are suffering, Big Oil Exxon was able to make a $10.7 billion profit in the first quarter this year, primarily by charging exorbitant gasoline prices. Nothing new because Exxon paid its CEO over $20 million in salary last year and paid zero corporate income taxes despite billions in profits.

The government spent millions over six years trying to convict a black ballplayer of fraud while Wall Street whites escape trials for its many admitted criminal cheating of the people. So let's consider the WDT photo of California's overcrowded prisons illustrated with three-decker bunks crowded with prisoners, all black; apparently no white crooks in that prison.

All of us have heard of "shared sacrifice" umpteen times which is affecting the rich guys, too, because they couldn't say that if it weren't true. Yeah, right — GE, Exxon, FedEx and all the other biggies have zero sacrifices to share. Here's the topper. The Texas State House, with about 95 percent Republicans, voted down relief for schools but voted to continue a special sales tax exemption on yachts costing more than $250,000. No kidding.

So, for Pete's sake, when are all you suffering people going to protest as your earned benefits, your kids' education, your retirement plans and about every other plan go in the garbage can while corporate America sails on unabated?

So, hopefully, if there's ever to be a nationwide day of protest, this 87-year-old nobody with his trusty walker will be with you on Public Square with his old “honk for peace' sign updated with a “honk for protest” revision. Raining or not, honest.

The day did not come for Stewart MacMillan. But may he now rest in peace just the same.

We can't go on together with suspicious minds; and we can't build our dreams on suspicious minds.

MAY 18, 2011: Greg Mortenson's best-seller, “Three Cups of Tea,” prompted thousands of people to donate millions of dollars to his organization, the Central Asia Institute, so he could build hundreds of elementary schools in rural villages of Pakistan.

But the CAI is now unraveling after Mortenson was asked a very reasonable question: Where did all the money go?

The answer is pending, but CAI's fundraising days may be over based on press reports of shuttered schools in Pakistan and a financial investigation being launched by the attorney general of Montana, where Mortenson lives.

“Three Cups of Tea” and three words “accountability, transparency and sustainability” came to mind frequently last week while I attended a two-day conference near Mzuzu, Malawi, with representatives of Presbyterian churches in Europe and North America, and foundations that provide funds for faith-based educational and medical efforts. I was joined by Howard Kelly, director of the Capital Corridor Trade and Tourism Initiative for the Thousand Islands Bridge Authority.

Millions of dollars from these church groups — and thousands of dollars from Watertown First Presbyterian Church — has been sent to the Synod of Livingstonia, which oversees health clinics, schools and churches in northern Malawi.

And all of these organizations are asking the same question of the Synod's leaders: Can we see an audit from last year to find out where all the money has been spent? For instance, can you provide documentation to show donors in Toronto, Charlotte, Aberdeen and Belfast that the money they gave us to buy anti-malaria drugs actually bought anti-malaria drugs?

In our case, Northern New Yorkers who have been sending money to Malawi to help build the Mchangautuwa Church and Chivumu school can be assured their money is accounted for. Compared to the Church of Scotland, for instance, we're sending chump change to Malawi, and chump change is pretty easy to track.

After the conference ended, Howard and I toured the church and school where our money goes, and I was pleased to see continued progress since my visits in 2007 and 2009. The school is completing the construction of a headmaster's home, and plans to build an adjacent soccer field are taking shape. The Mchangautuwa Church has grown to 6,000 members since we helped provide funding for the roof.

But all is not well elsewhere. Church and foundation executives in Scotland are holding in escrow the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than releasing the money to the Synod right now. Myers Park Presbyterian Church of Charlotte, which gives $1 million a year to missions worldwide, has for several years been sending additional money and people to Malawi to help the Synod develop professional accounting methods. So far the effort has produced no audit.

A representative of the Presbyterian Church in Canada warned Synod leaders that money is going to stop coming if questions aren't answered soon. Western nations, he explained, have instituted more stringent accounting requirements since 9/11. It is no longer good enough for a church to simply say that money was sent to another continent for missions; governments now require charities to account for a donation's final destination.

But in Malawi, the answer is always the same: If we get money designated for a financially struggling hospital in one region, and there is famine in another region, we must send the money to the greater crisis. There will be no audit.

The legendary Dr. David Livingstone traveled and worked in the region that today is known as Malawi. References to him, including the Synod's name, are everywhere. The inspired work of Scottish missionaries beginning in the 1880s has led to a modern statistic: Today there are more Presbyterians in Malawi than in the U.S.

And yet after 150 years of Presbyterian presence in Malawi, relationships are strained, in large part because extreme poverty is an expert at ambushing and then killing good intentions. Most villages still have no clean drinking water; most kids still have no shoes; most expectant mothers never see a doctor.

In another region of extreme poverty, Mortenson's audacious plan built — he claims — 141 schools in 15 years in Pakistan and Afghanistan. But a recent "60 Minutes" program visited 30 of the schools and discovered 15 were closed. Donations for schools had gone to book tours. Harrowing stories of rescue were created out of whole cloth.

And so despite all the good that CAI has indeed accomplished, Mortenson's program is about to collapse in less than 20 years because of a lack of accountability, transparency and sustainability.

Back in the day, Christians had simple marching orders: Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit." (Matthew 28:19-20)

Today, if you go to a Malawi church service just once, you figure out pretty quickly that if anybody is going to make disciples of anyone else, Malawians ought to be missionaries to America.

Thus, the First World church now works under these marching orders: "But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?" (1 John 3:17)

And that's why First Presbyterian Church in Watertown, and other denominations and foundations elsewhere, continue the fight against the ravages of extreme poverty, even though the books will likely never balance.

RECENT COLUMNS (see all)

BLOG ARCHIVE