Dear editor:
I laughed out loud when I read Mr. Turner’s list of my cousin Rainer Hummel’s accomplishments (“The Turner Report: The voice from the big house,” May 28). Especially, the big house. The old Phillips-Lansing estate. Renovated. Still a home. Not a hotel.
All that by a person born in a backward South American country, about the time when Fidel Castro (friend of Justin Trudeau’s family) and his compatriot Che Guevara were instigating a revolution against the American-affiliated Batista regime.
Our family grew up in dire poverty. Prussian refugees fleeing a Stalinist military of killers and rapists.
Rainer lived, literally, in a mud hut. No running water. Old newsprint for toilet paper. Food was whatever you could grow or catch and kill.
In the mid-1960s, our families moved to Niagara-on-the-Lake. A paradise. The patriarch of our extended family instilled upon us that we must all work together, specifically to build businesses to supply products and services that our community needed. Everyone helps everyone so that we all thrive.
Our matriarch reminded us that, in Europe we might have been enemies, but in Niagara-on-the-Lake, we are community. That includes the Pillitteris, Moris, Burlands, Ahluwalias, Patels, Obamas — everyone.
Rainer took that to heart. That ethic prompted him to speak up for Andrea Kaiser. They may not know each other well, and they may not share the same politics, but anyone who is trying to make a difference for the community deserves a fair hearing.
Besides, her ideas might make a positive impact. Never take anyone for granted.
No one in Rainer’s large extended family ever forgets that the difference between a mud hut and a mansion is only the next bad political decision, aided by a self-indulgent press.
As a former legislator, always intimately involved with lawmakers and attorneys, you must understand the root of our legal and political tradition: the Socratic method. The search for universal truth.
Every point of view and fact is important and should be given due deference. Unless you rely on personal bias? But as any lawmaker can tell you: never be your own advocate. That way lies foolishness.
My point? Class distinction may not be as significant as some believe. Wealthy, middling or poor: we all need to hold ourselves to account. No one is perfect. Give everyone grace.
And give every idea, every vision a chance to flourish.
Wallace Wiens
Old Town
