Tribute of the Honorable Reverend Walter E. Fauntroy
To the Life and Legacy of
PATRICIA LAWSON
On behalf of the
NO FEAR COALITION
Saturday, February 25, 2006
To my colleague in ministry, the Reverend Delmon L. Coates, to Bert Lawson and the cherished members of our beloved Patricia Ann Lawson’s family. Let me first thank you for allowing me to say a word of comfort to you on behalf what is known as the “No Fear Coalition,” an organization that, like Mt. Ennon Baptist Church, was very dear Pat’s heart.
The No Fear Coalition is composed of people who, like Pat Lawson, and Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and Dr. C. Delores Tucker, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy “See wrong and try to right it, see sickness and try to heal it, see injustice and try to expose it, see pain and try to pour the oil of compassion upon it.” We are people who, like Patricia and Carl Schurz, say “My country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right.”
We have come to say to you in this hour of pain and sorrow that Pat was part of our family too, a family of people who see wrong in the treatment employees of the federal government and are determined to right it. She is the fourth of a pantheon of great African American women that I have lost in recent months: C. Delores Tucker, Rosa Parks, Coretta Scott King and now, Patricia A. Lawson. The world doesn’t know her name as well those luminaries, but I know her as one of the unsung foot soldiers in our struggle over the years of her life for our civil rights and human dignity. Take it from someone who knows, Pat is among the hundreds of thousands of strong black women who labor in the vineyard but seldom taste the wine of our appreciation for what we do for others.
The Heavy Price of Leadership
One pays a price for the kind of leadership that foot soldiers in a civil rights movement like Ella Baker, and Septima Clark, Fannie Lou Hamer, Marsha Coleman-Adebayo and Pat Lawson give us in their lifetimes. The No Fear Coalition and its leader, Dr. Adebayo are here to state our unequivocal view that Pat’s untimely passing, like that of many employees of our federal government that we have known before her, is directly related to the stress she has been under over the more than twenty years that she had the courage to challenge the unjust treatment at the federal agency for which she worked.
The Pat Lawson Initiative
We are here to speak two words of comfort to you. The first is that, because we share your grief, we are not going to take this sitting down. We intend to announce next month a drive to be known as the Pat Lawson Initiative, a series of public hearings that will bring to light two things. First, we shall shine the light of truth on the findings of those whose research and clinical studies confirm the fact that the stress generated by a pattern of retaliation against black employees generally and whistle blowers in particular who stand up for their rights, kills! Justice delayed is justice denied. So, please be comforted by our determination that she shall not have died in vain; please be encouraged by the fact that the Pat Lawson Initiative that we shall launch will become a Living Memorial to her: the introduction and passing of a “No Fear Act II” in the congress to be elected in November of this year to serve in the 110th Congress. Stay tuned and watch her spirit soar. God is not through with her yet!
Don’t Worry About Pat
The second word of comfort that we want to leave with you has to do with Pat’s spirit. Don’t worry about Pat. She’s all right. Let me explain what I mean by that statement. When I left the congress after successful twenty-year tenure, I decided to become “computer literate.” My assistant pastor, Dr. James H. Wilson, had worked for IBM and volunteered to teach me how to use the computer in a program called Word Perfect.
Well, after a couple of training and practice sessions, I got so comfortable with the program and my new computer that I decided to type my next sermon on my computer. And was I happy with the results! On that Saturday night when I finished the sermon, I was so excited about the masterpiece that I had crafted, that I decided to go straight to bed and get up early on Sunday morning to rehearse the work of art that I had wrought. I turned the computer off and hit the sack in the blessed assurance that I was “ready to stand on the wall” this Sunday.
I got up at 6:00 a.m. as planned, went to the computer ready to print out the sermon and rehearse it for the 11:00 a.m. service. But when I turned the computer on, I couldn’t find my sermon. I called my assistant pastor at 6:05 a.m. I said, “Wilson, I typed one of the best sermons I have every written into this computer last night and now I can’t find it anywhere in this thing. You’ve got to help me find it.” He said, “Reverend, did you hit the save button?” I said, “I didn’t hit delete.” He, “Reverend, I didn’t ask you that. Did you hit the save button?” I said, “I hit the “help” button.” He said, “Reverend, I didn’t ask you that. Let me explain something to you about a computer: you can type anything you want to type into a computer, but if you fail to hit the “save button,” you will lose all of it.” I said, “What? Do you mean I can’t get back a single paragraph, that every word of that sermon I typed into that computer last night is gone forever?” He said, Reverend, I hate t tell you this but that’s the way it is. You can’t recover one jot or tidal of it of that sermon you wrote last night.” I sat there in stunned silence for about trying to take in that cruel fact that he shared with me.
I just came by here this morning to tell you, don’t worry about Pat. I read the obituary this morning. I saw it for myself. It says that one day many, many years ago, down in Fredericksburg, Va. at Shiloh Baptist Church, Old Site, she made a decision to hit the save button! And the record of her life shows that, thereafter, she had the good sense to hit that save button when she was up, when she was down and I know that she hit this week at work when she was almost in the ground.
The No Fear Coalition promises to keep her faith, to build with our “Pat Lawson No Fear II hearings and to work harder than ever thereafter to pass No Fear Act II in the 110th Congress as a living memorial to your dear wife, mother, friend and our beloved Patricia Ann Lawson, God’s child.
