Theodore Decker: After mayor's address, we should remember the brave and quiet of Columbus

Toward the start of his 2022 State of the City address last week, Mayor Andrew J. Ginther said something that might have sounded familiar.

"Columbus is a special place," Ginther said, "and it is worth fighting for."

If you're a movie buff, you might remember a similar line spoken by actor Morgan Freeman toward the end of the grim 1995 crime drama, "Se7en."

Freeman's police detective character, in turn, notes that the words are not his; he says that he is paraphrasing a famous author.

"Ernest Hemingway once wrote, 'The world is a fine place, and worth fighting for,'" Freeman says. "I agree with the second part."

For the sake of accuracy, let us first acknowledge that what Hemingway actually wrote in his novel, "For Whom the Bell Tolls," was:, "The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it."

Ginther's echoing of the line might have been unintentional. Regardless, shades of Hemingway, when appearing in an address by Ginther, leaped out at me.

It also brought another quote by Hemingway to mind.

Two quotes, actually.

The first comes from "Hills Like White Elephants," and it fits when you consider that elsewhere in his address, Ginther spoke words in strings like this: "a strategic quantifiable playbook by which we will optimize our resources to tackle our city's greatest challenges, all while strengthening our shared social fabric."

After a line like that, you can hear the pleading of the female character in that story.

"Would you please please please please please please please stop talking?"

But that is not the quote I wanted to spend much time on.

The second quote comes from another of Hemingway's classic novels, "A Farewell to Arms."

It appears in Book 1, Chapter 10, when the character Rinaldi visits his friend and the novel's protagonist, who has been wounded in war.

"You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering," Rinaldi says.

Ginther — and most politicians, to be fair — don't remember nearly enough that the biggest favor they can do for themselves is to please stop talking, to get out of their own way and let their constituents make their points for them.

Ginther remembered that in this recent address when he showcased the stories of city residents who struggled during the pandemic but pressed on, aided along the way by various city programs.

Their stories were powerful, and the framing by the administration was smart.

There are so many others in Columbus whose struggles pass us by, largely unnoticed.

I think of people I've heard from in Columbus in the past few years and wonder how they're getting along.

Families of those lost to record violence, with about half of the killings going unsolved.

Tenants of places like Colonial Village, where residents are stuck while the city leans on derelict owners to bring their complex up to code and into the realm of the minimally habitable.

Residents of the Hilltop, walking alleys where mountains of trash seem to spring up overnight, only to languish there for weeks.

Single parents holding down two jobs, their earnings gobbled up just by the rent.

The retiree forced to walk down the center of his icy, untreated South Side street because his neighborhood has no sidewalks.

I think about the email I received out of the blue last fall, regarding I column I'd written years earlier.

The column had been about a man who lived in a patch of woods near a West Side strip mall. He was found dead one morning in the mall's parking lot, and it took weeks for authorities to determine his name.

The email was from a woman whose mother had dated the man years earlier, when she was still in her teens. I'll leave out the names to protect her privacy.

"Eventually they split up and my mother later passed away," she wrote. "I lost contact with him, but every few years I would think of him and Google his name. I was saddened to learn of the circumstances of his passing.

"(He) was a very troubled alcoholic who never got the help he desperately needed," she continued. "He loved cooking, art and music and was a talented guitar player. He introduced me to several bands that I still listen to today. He always treated me with kindness, and I have many good memories of him.

"No one should die in the way he did," she wrote. "Your article helped to humanize him, and I am grateful for it."

Columbus is a fine place, and worth the fighting for.

It is full of people who are leading brave and quiet lives.

We mustn't let that conceal the reality that they are suffering.

tdecker@dispatch.com

@Theodore_Decker

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus Mayor Andrew Ginther, help those suffering violence, poverty