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For Norma - 1943 - 2001. In context: When I spoke in Manchester, UK, some years ago about the effects of depleted uranium in Iraq, Rae Street, of Manchester CND asked me if there was any campaign dealing specifically with DU. There was not and thus CADU, Campaign Against Depleted Uranium was born. Norma Wilson, like Rae, stayed up nights doing a crash course on its effects and although living on borrowed time, Norma never let up. What an irony that she too, died of cancer. Sadness engulfed me when I read of Norma Wilson's death. I had been unaware that she was ill again and now I will never be able to give her the support she gave me. I remember her telephoning out of the blue asking how I was and she was the first person to whom I was able to say (including myself) that I was deeply, hopelessly depressed. Iraq¹s dying children in the name of we the people of the United Nations¹ had finally felled me. She had a telepathy, an empathy with human kind. Norma was my first step to recovery, she said it had happened to her: and when I started to come out of it a year later, there were piles of papers everywhere, my home was a mess and I didn¹t know where to start clearing up.¹ She made me laugh for the first time in ages: she had just described mine. She typically, never mentioned why she became depressed - because she had cancer, but rang on an ongoing basis to check on me. Just after the Korean Airliner crash at Stanstead Airport, we spoke together at St John¹s Church, Cambridge on depleted uranium. When I arrived she said I looked tired, was I alright? She never mentioned her health and insisted I sit down - whilst she put out CADU leaflets and put up DU-related photographs and posters. She was one of the most passionate speakers I have heard; it was a fact packed speech, to a packed audience in a wonderful, ancient church, witness to history¹s triumphs and wickednesses. The Mayor of Saffron Waldon, in which Stanstead falls, had come, concerned at the DU ballast in the crashed airliner and the health effects it might have on his constituents. He learned far more from Norma than from any of us. She then refused help boxing up the display and caught the last train back north. Whenever we met at conferences, her warmth and energy shone. An energy one now knows must have come at huge cost. And I remember her quirky notes when people e-mailed me via the CADU office, which she forwarded: the world thinks you live in a cupboard in the office ..¹ Dear Norma, I wish I had known you better, I wish I had known you were ill. Thank you for all you have done. You will leave a hole in the heart of all you touched - but your spirit will fill it and stay, for all time. Death is not extinguishing the light But putting out the lamp, Because the dawn has come. _______________________________________________ Sent via the discussion list of the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq. To unsubscribe, visit http://lists.casi.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/casi-discuss To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk