Lila

"We have to go into Senate meetings and make ourselves seen and heard. We have to go to the House meetings. We have to go to the City Council meetings. We have to have good people run for office so we can have balance and hold them accountable..." - Lila Lipscomb.


Lila Lipscomb, the mother in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911. The scenes in which she recounts the story of her son Michael's death have had cinema-goers sniffing into their sleeves. "For many years," says Lipscomb, "I thought I had to control everything. I had a real controlling spirit. But, boy, when the army stands in your house and tells you that your oldest son is killed, all that flies out the window. Over this last year and a half, I've been known to cry a bit."

The power of Lipscomb's story lies in the sharpness of the U-turn she made and her eloquence in speaking about it. Initially, she supported the war, on the assumption that the government knew best. But just two weeks into the conflict her 26-year-old son, a sergeant in the US army, was shot down while serving as a door gunner in a Black Hawk helicopter. Five other soldiers died with him. A week or so later she received his last letter, in which he told her he thought Bush had lost the plot and that they shouldn't be in Iraq, that the whole thing was folly.

Lila is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. She is scheduled to appear here in the Heartland on September 15, 2005 at the Osage Center in Cape Girardeau, MO.