Ready and aware, reporters track a year full of news

Dec. 29—They say many military veterans, particularly those who served in combat, don't want to remember the past because the recollections of what they did and saw are too painful.

But the 25 military veterans who took part in a visit to several military memorials in Washington, D.C., had no choice but to recall those bygone days and work out the pain.

In some cases, they cried.

In June, I accompanied a group of former soldiers, Marines, sailors and airmen who were part of Honor Flight of Northern New Mexico, which flies vets at no cost to the monuments that honor those who fought in World War II, Korea and Vietnam.

On an Honor Flight, a younger relative often accompanies an older vet in a guardian role. These civilians' reflections on helping dad or grandad or uncle (there were no female veterans on this particular trip) colored my experience, both as an Air Force veteran and a reporter.

So did the time spent talking with these men on an airplane, bus or bar.

The time reinforced a longstanding belief: Journalism sometimes can serve to salute those in the community who've made a difference — even if what they did took place decades before in some long-forgotten battle or God-forsaken military outpost during peacetime.

The architect of this scheme to get me aboard the flight was the late Chuck Zobac, a U.S. Army veteran who served during the Vietnam War. Zobac conned — er, convinced — my editor to let me cover the Honor Flight as a way to draw attention to the Albuquerque-based nonprofit.

On the flight out, a few were willing to talk to me right away. Some were not, perhaps reticent to share their feelings about things that still haunt them. Some who did not serve in combat told me they felt undeserving to be in the company of those who did — a not-uncommon emotion among vets who weren't in combat.

I met a man who learned to kill in order to stay alive, one who called the civilians who died during the attacks of 9/11 heroes — "They didn't know it was coming," he said — and one who told me he turns to his Bible, not his loved ones, when he needs comfort to wipe out the memories of war.

Regardless of their age — the oldest was pushing 100; the youngest were in their mid-70s — they spoke a common language when it came to sharing stories about boot camp experiences, chow hall food and latrine duty.

Many were shot at, and quite naturally, they shot back. Some clearly had killed and found a way to express that without actually talking about it. All, I sensed, were grateful to be alive and proud of their sacrifice.

As I listened, I wanted to be any one of them, maybe all of them. But I was also honored to be an observer, painting a portrait in words about their lives.

It rained steadily the day we hit D.C. for the multi-memorial tour. There, the men separated as individuals as they and their guardians visited the various monuments.

Their silence seemed fitting as the rain fell on their faces — it helped hide the streams of tears running down their cheeks.

Zobac, who would die only a few months later, made no effort to hide his emotions. Viewing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, he used one of his hands to wipe away tears brought on by seeing the names of those who died inscribed on the wall in front of him.

I asked him a stupid question.

"How many did you know?"

He paused before answering.

"Too many."

And then he walked away.

— Robert Nott

As I drove up the steep, winding road of the Pajarito Plateau to hear the U.S. Energy Department secretary speak at Los Alamos National Laboratory, I had no idea she would discuss why she reversed the federal government's decision to revoke J. Robert Oppenheimer's security clearance.

And it was an occasion I could've easily missed.

It was mid-August, and I'd received a broadly worded news release late the day before, announcing Jennifer Granholm was touring the lab. I'm fairly certain this was her first publicized visit there.

When I called the Energy Department's media relations number in Washington,D.C., a woman answered who was off work and out with her children at a loud venue. She gave me a D.C. colleague's email and said I'd have to request a media pass.

By then it was evening, and I knew I wouldn't reach anyone else on the East Coast. So I called the local lab spokeswoman and hoped for the best.

I reached her. She said she would escort me into the auditorium where Granholm would be part of a panel discussing a lab-produced documentary on Oppenheimer and the nuclear weapons program that evolved from the Manhattan Project.

It wasn't until the next day, when I was entering the building, that I learned Granholm would talk about why she posthumously restored Oppenheimer's clearance.

Roughly 600 people, mostly employees and some dignitaries, packed the venue.

I wasn't allowed to bring in a recording device, camera or even my phone because of tight security rules. I would do my best to accurately scribble in my notepad.

Fortunately, Granholm made the gist of her explanation short and pithy: She thought Oppenheimer had been railroaded.

Listening to Granholm talk about her decision in Los Alamos, where Oppenheimer oversaw the atomic bomb's development, gave this event a historic feel.

She also was presenting her story at the same time the blockbuster biopic Oppenheimer, which portrays the circumstances surrounding the physicist losing his clearance, was lighting up the box office.

The movie renewed interest in the man known as the father of the atomic bomb and received critical acclaim for showing his brilliance intertwined with flaws as he made a profound impact on science and geopolitics.

Granholm said Oppenheimer was punished for expressing misgivings about the increasingly destructive power of nuclear weapons — a politically unpopular stance at the time. Allegations that he was a Communist sympathizer were just the rationale used to go after him, Granholm added.

Politics should play no part in personnel security, she said, echoing the written decree she issued in December 2022 when she reversed the 1954 decision by the Atomic Energy Commission to dissolve Oppenheimer's clearance.

Erasing the unjust stain from Oppenheimer's record is important, not only for his legacy but to help protect today's scientists from being maligned and muzzled by those making politicized attacks on science, she said.

"We want scientists to openly question and to openly speak up," Granholm said.

As for the lab's documentary, it was an overview of Oppenheimer's life blended with segments about how the lab's nuclear weapons program carries on his legacy.

The documentary tapped the insights of historians and Kai Bird, who co-authored American Prometheus, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography from which director Christopher Nolan drew source material for Oppenheimer.

Granholm said she read American Prometheus as a first step in exploring whether Oppenheimer suffered an injustice. From there, she had agency researchers sift through reams of documents.

Granholm said the proceedings to determine whether Oppenheimer should lose his clearance were badly mishandled. Neither the scientist nor his attorneys were supplied with basic information — such as the specific accusations — so they could prepare a defense for the hearing.

Instead, Oppenheimer was blindsided, she said. His adversaries never showed he was disloyal, instead claiming he had too many character flaws to be privy to classified information.

Oppenheimer's grandson, Charles Oppenheimer, a member of the discussion panel, thanked Granholm, noting her action righted a long-ago wrong his family has had to carry. Now he can forgive the government and find peace.

It was a poignant moment.

Covering this event added a dimension to Oppenheimer when I saw it later. Having his security clearance restored and an official acknowledgment that it had been improperly revoked could be part of the movie's epilogue.

It also gave a bit more meaning to the lab and nuclear weapons program I've written about for four years. It's a salient reminder of Los Alamos' complex and tangled history, with the future in a nuclear world as uncertain now as it was 70 years ago.

— Scott Wyland

In the past two months, I've talked to protesters calling for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip and rabbis of every Jewish congregation in the city, who opposed one.

I've listened as New Mexicans united by their advocacy for the Democratic Party argued over whether the state's all-Democratic congressional delegation should press for a cease fire, as the U.S. geared up to block a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have demanded it.

Most memorably, I have talked to Santa Feans of all ethnicities and beliefs — high schoolers, octogenarians, Jews, Muslims, Palestinian-Americans and others — hurting because of both the war and others' responses to it.

Members of the largest Jewish congregation in Santa Fe, Temple Beth Shalom, "absolutely mourn the loss of life" in the war, which Hamas holds responsibility for, Rabbi Neil Amswych said in a November interview.

"You can't have peace with a neighbor who is trying to kill you," Amswych said, noting Jews see Hamas as a threat to Israel's right to exist.

"I struggle profoundly with simplistic accusations against Israel that almost blame them for the terror that Hamas inflicted," he said. "Terror is never, ever justified, and finding that there are people who try to excuse it, including people in Santa Fe, has been a real challenge."

Others described being haunted daily by images of injured, dying and starving Palestinians, adding the victims' lives have been devalued by not only Israel but the wider world.

"Last time we had the strength to look, my son had lost 10 members in his family [in Gaza]," Samayya Cabré said in an interview at an anti-war protest this month, describing her family as living in a state of "heavy grieving" and "incredible disbelief."

"It's enraging that it's being called a war between Hamas and Israel when the people that are being murdered are innocent Palestinians and thousands of children who had nothing to do with Hamas," she said.

The issue has been difficult to cover not only because of its emotional weight but because people calling for solidarity with Israel and people condemning Israel consider the other side underinformed and misinformed — and people on both sides invoke decades or even centuries of history to explain the cause of the war and their beliefs about how it should end.

Understanding that history has been a learning curve I know I will continue on in the new year, and I join those most affected by the war in hoping Santa Feans continue to educate themselves about it.

— Maya Hilty

I came on board The New Mexican in late July after stints at several newspapers in Colorado, including most recently three years covering the city of Aurora. While a lot differentiates Santa Fe from Colorado's third-largest city, it quickly became clear many of the issues I covered at my previous job had followed me here.

As I spoke to various people inside and outside city government, one issue kept coming up over and over: Santa Fe's lack of affordable housing.

In just the first few weeks on the job, multiple people described the crisis. As in Aurora, a city of 393,000 that struggles with high housing costs along with the rest of metro Denver, a shortage of housing for low- and middle-income families has many trickle-down effects, including making it harder to recruit and retain workers in city government, schools and the service industry.

Then-City Council candidate Geno Zamora told me his law firm was even having a hard time recruiting new attorneys because they were put off by high housing costs. The problem even touches the region's highest-paying employer, Los Alamos National Laboratory, which sees its worker commute from as far away as Albuquerque and beyond because of housing shortages in Santa Fe and Las Alamos.

Ed Archuleta, executive director of St. Elizabeth Shelter, put it this way: "Unless you're rich, you can't afford to live in Santa Fe anymore."

While there are plenty of working-class people scraping by in Santa Fe, Archuleta's sentiment has the ring of prophecy about it. It's that sense of frustration that appears to have spurred the blowout victory for a controversial high-end excise tax, which passed with 73% of the vote in the November election.

While it will be interesting to see how the tax (which is currently being challenged in court by the Santa Fe Association of Realtors) affects the work of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, it's impact will be measured in years and not weeks.

In the meantime, housing prices show no signs of plateauing.

Few people bear the brunt of Santa Fe's lack of affordable housing more than those who are already homeless and struggling to get back on their feet. People who work with the homeless have shared their frustrations about the lack of options for people who need a roof over their heads, especially in the winter.

The nature of the news is that you spend a lot of time covering problems that need fixing, so it's always a pleasure to write about the people working to find solutions.

In the case of the city's homeless, those problem-solvers include the congregation of Christ Lutheran Church and the Rev. Joene Herr. The congregation received approval from the City Council in mid-December to host the city's first safe outdoor space for the homeless, which will consist of 10 Pallet shelters.

The safe outdoor space, anticipated to open in several months, is being run as a pilot program by the city to determine whether it is an effective stepping stone to get people into permanent housing. Christ Lutheran will host the Pallet shelter village on its property on Arroyo Chamiso Road, and wraparound case management services will be provided by The Life Link.

The intrepid Herr said she was motivated to host the safe outdoor space after seeing a Pallet shelter at an expo in December 2022. When she brought the idea to her congregation, it rallied behind her. Christ Lutheran celebrated its 60th anniversary Dec. 10, and Herr said most of the approximately parishioners are at least a decade older.

"We're small, we're old — but if we can do it, anyone can do it," she told me in advance of the council's vote to approve the safe outdoor space.

When planning what the safe outdoor space would look like, the congregation solicited feedback from current and former homeless residents and took a road trip to see a Pallet shelter village hosted by a church in Colorado.

The church? Restoration Christian Fellowship — in Aurora.

I reported at my previous job on Restoration's work serving the homeless, which was a passion of the church's founding pastor Felix Gilbert, who died unexpectedly in 2021 at just 61. I think Gilbert would be moved to know his work was inspiring people in a different state.

Will 10 Pallet shelters solve the city's affordable housing problem? No, and neither will any other single intervention. But as we head into the coldest months of winter, it's encouraging to know that help is on the horizon for at least some of the city's homeless residents. In the new year, I hope we can all take Herr's challenge to see how we can make a difference for the people in our communities.

— Carina Julig

Former N.M. Gov. Bill Richardson died in his sleep last night? Heard from a good source.

Now, that's a news tip. But in an email, on a Saturday morning at 9:34, it's an air-raid siren.

And sure enough, it turned out to be as true as it was explosive: Former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, whose business card didn't have enough room for all his titles in a long political career, had died overnight in Massachusetts at the age of 75.

The rest is the rest: marshaling a group of reporters to verify the news, then creating a plan to handle the scope of a huge political life that was global, not just local. For nearly a full day, it was a matter of piecing together information, memories and biography into a package that would accurately reflect Richardson's effect on New Mexico, his adopted home, and politics, his natural lair.

I've thought a lot about Richardson since his death. I met him when he was a back-bench congressman in the '80s as he sold a bill to clean up, of all things, the sport of boxing. I couldn't say we were friends, but we were friendly enough, I suppose. I will say it was easy to like him: he had charm, the real thing.

I also knew he could be churlish. Richardson wielded power like a cudgel, sometimes swinging it wildly at his enemies. But he also had a soft spot for the guy who washed dishes, the gal who worked in a state office, the family trying to make ends meet on 45 thou a year.

And sure, he loved the spotlight, whether it was fixed on him at the Roundhouse or in some grand ballroom as he negotiated a prisoner exchange. I never begrudged Richardson's love of attention, in part because he could take a single thread of accomplishment, or potential accomplishment, and somehow weave it into something real — a Spaceport, a diplomatic chit, a Cabinet post.

The last time I spoke with Richardson, it was a pretty summer day, around noontime. He was sitting on a bench outside the Santa Fe Public Library downtown. We talked about a mutual acquaintance and his efforts to find her a post in government. As we lounged in the sun, I was reminded of the scene in The Godfather, with Brando musing about ways to get things done.

Richardson, of course, was not the Godfather. But he liked his role as Power Broker Emeritus, happy to use his endless contact list to provide a favor or two, or maybe raise some cash for a needy cause. He was the rare guy for whom nothing was too big — or too small. Even from a library bench.

I thought about that a few weeks later as dignitaries, a former U.S. president and a few people making 45 thou a year came to Santa Fe to bid him farewell.

He'd have loved the scene — pols and peons telling stories about a big man, and a bigger force of nature.

Was Bill Richardson a massive story on Sept. 2, and beyond?

Yup. Heard it from a good source.

— Phill Casaus