The art of worldly silence

When the story hit that Emerita “Emie” R. Romero, a 37-year-old mother of two from the Philippines, was missing, my wife and I held our collective breath and hoped that it was just a quirky event that would be cleared up. The hopes were not realistic. Now it’s a murder case.

The pros are on the job. Let them do their work. The professional investigators will investigate, and the professional reporters will report. I have neither role in this matter. So I’m not going to buzz around with idle speculation.

In fact, you might have noticed that I’m never on the gadfly and gossip train. Some of my pals chastise me for shying away from “hot” stories. And, true, I’ve never taken that road. So I might as well tell you why.

First, though, kindly note that I’m not trying to dictate how other people behave. I’m just sharing my own outlook when it comes to communications after tragedies.

I’ve spent a lot of my career in aviation. One unpleasant truth is that in the industry, accidents happen. For example, a long time ago, one of my friends was killed in a helicopter incident and the buzz, buzz, busybody buzz of the gadflies started immediately.

It was exactly like watching flies materialize, seemingly out of nowhere, to swarm upon a dead animal, or upon a fallen breadfruit.

That particular accident wasn’t the first time I lost a friend like that, but it was the first time I had to deal with it as a manager. Before that event I had never paid attention to gossips. Heck, I didn’t even know any gossips.

So, all those years ago, I had to come up with some sort of theory on the gig. My theory? Gadflies seemed like lonely people who craved attention, or they were people who wanted to feel important by having something important to say. The worse the tragedy, the more important they felt by piggybacking on the event. And they didn’t always employ criticism, by the way, but sometimes made grand displays of haughty sanctimony. Either way, the common element was always an air of attention-seeking superiority. That might sound like a rag-tag, homespun theory, because that’s indeed what it was, but nothing I’ve seen since contradicts it.

Meanwhile, over the decades, in various situations, I had to field some calls from spouses or children of pilots who met with disaster. These survivors were sometimes tormented by how the pilot’s legacy had been defiled by the tongue-waggers. After all, the public mind, like a sponge, merely absorbs what is around it. So the paradox here is that the knowledgeable people know enough to wait until the facts are in, which, in aviation, might take years to sort out, while the gadflies, of course, exercise no such discipline.

So the gadflies will merrily pollute the well before any normal person knows, or even cares, where the well is. By the time everyone finally meanders over to drink of the discourse, the damage has been done. You can’t undo it.

Aviation isn’t the only realm that is dogged by this factor. The military, maritime, and law enforcement worlds also have to deal with it, where any professional is just one bad moment away from a gadfly swarm around his grave, around his reputation, around his family, around his buddies. Many Saipan residents, and, beyond that, many readers of this column, have worked in these realms, so I think they’ll nod their heads in agreement on this point.

By contrast, in the modern age, more and more people have clerical careers, so I think the gadfly effect will grow. From what I’ve seen, gadflies usually have safe, petty little jobs on the sidelines of life. So they are quite unconcerned about they, themselves, being victimized by post-accident gossip someday. They will die like they lived: In boring, humdrum anonymity. Hence the smugness and, sometimes, false swagger.

Anyway, in any realm, and for whatever reason, my outlook has remained the same: I don’t seek attention from anyone’s grief or tragedy. I have seen too much of it, and I’ve seen how the communications dynamic plays out.

I am gratified to see that some good folks have put up cash rewards to help solve the Romero case. And my household, being very much run by a Filipina, takes this case to heart in the extreme. That’s all I will say for now.

But buzz, buzz, busy-bee buzz? Never.

Visit Ed Stephens Jr. at EdStephensJr.com. His column runs every Friday.