Unfortunately, Bay City has a different claim to fame these days, one of infamy. Marvin Schur, a 93-year-old World War II veteran and widower of two years, passed away in what medical examiner Dr. Kanu Virani termed "a slow, painful death", finding frostbite on his foot. The city utility had installed a limiter on his power meter 4 days before his death because the retiree was behind on his payments; the limiter is outside and must be reset after a certain limit is reached. It is unlikely that Schur was aware of what happened, probably figuring his power had been shut off for nonpayment. (The city did not personally contact Schur, simply leaving a note on the door, but according to neighbors, the man rarely went outside during cold weather.) In a sad, ironic twist, the man had clipped money to his 4 unpaid power bills for their payment, which investigators discovered.
I do understand that utilities are not charities, and they have costs to cover. I do not know the specifics of the situation--why Schur, who had paid his power bills for years before the limiter, didn't pay during the weeks before the limiter was put on his line. Was it a matter of a tight budget, like many people struggling to make ends meet during this tough recession? Or, perhaps, as some suggest, he was suffering a type of dementia?
Here's what we do know: this good man risked everything--his life and his health--to serve the cause of freedom, his country during WWII. Like all who serve in the military, he had his buddies, a bond of brotherhood determined to have each other's back in the face of a fierce, determined enemy.
But Marvin Schur fought and lost to a different enemy that January day--a heartless bureaucracy hiding behind its impersonal procedures, insisting they were fair in treating all their customers with the same lack of due professional diligence and common courtesy, installing equipment without their customers' explicit knowledge, consent or training, in the dead of winter, knowing that a service shutdown would be life-threatening.
Yes, Marvin Schur, without buddies to cover his back, faced a far more difficult enemy, one cowardly and unwilling to face him man-to-man. Childless and living alone, the widower died without someone, anyone looking out for him, his dying pleas for help, his final words unheard, no medic, nurse or loved one to comfort him as he died in pain. Some consider solitary confinement a harsh treatment; what more brutal death than one whom dies alone? A nation he had valiantly saved failed him. A neighbor discovered his body too late.
I'm not placated by politicians paying lip service to the tragedy or utility companies promising to review their procedures. How would you feel if your own grandfather, father or uncle had died this way? Is his life any less worthy because he had no survivors? This man was not a deadbeat, not looking for a handout; he died with honor, wanting to pay his bills. If the utility company had just gone the extra step, if the neighbors had checked on him just a little sooner...
We are America. We are better than this. We need to accept personal responsibility. We need to go the extra mile. We need to look out for each other, just as our valiant soldier-warriors do. We need to rediscover respect for our elders, whom have sacrificed much to prepare our way; we must not forget, as Sir Isaac Newton noted, we have stood on the shoulder of giants. We must be patient and listen for wisdom, or we will repeat the mistakes of the past anew.
Mr. Schur, I never knew you, but the world is a better place because of you and your fellow soldiers. I wish in the end your community had done right by you. I pray that your death has not been in vain, that our business, political and community leaders will learn from your tragedy, that no one will ever again have to go through what you went through. God bless you, and may you rest in peace.
