Local Witnesses to London Bombings Impressed with British Resolve

The McKenzie family in London’s St. James Park.

By E.A. Barrera

“I think we all know what they are trying to do, they are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things we want to do, of trying to stop us going about our business as normal as we are entitled to do and they should not and must not succeed. When they try to intimidate us, we will not be intimidated, when they seek to change our country, our way of life by these methods, we will not be changed. When they try to divide our people or weaken our resolve, we will not be divided and our resolve will hold firm.”

The tour group pauses in the Colliseum in Rome.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair

July 7, 2005

They’d already seen so much by the time they entered London. Ramona resident and Bernardo Heights Middle School teacher Karen McKenzie, along with her husband Tom, helped chaperone a tour of 23 students (including their own children Trevor and Kelsey) through the historic sites of Italy and France. Nine adults joined the kids — who raised part of the funds for the trip themselves ($2,500 per student, plus top grades) and were eager to see the hustle and bustle of Vatican City during an average weekday.

The kids got their wish. They got to see the Vatican, as well as the sun set over the Tyrrhenian Sea while on the Isle of Capri. They stood on the steps of the Coliseum and imagined Gladiators battling lions. They went to Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre Museum … with Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberty Leading the People” to inspire their sense of freedom; and Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of Francesco del Giocondo’s wife to inspire their sense of beauty (Lisa Gerardini, also known as Mona Lisa).

The trip had been a revelation to the McKenzies, who by their own admission arrived in Europe under the assumption that Americans were not very popular in Europe at the moment, due to the war in Iraq and the current state of international politics. But the warmth they encountered and the lack of political turmoil they saw defied the stereotypes of a Europe obsessed with the politics of terrorism and anti-Americanism.

“I had some worries about protests against Americans,“ admitted Tom. “The media seems to want to blow things out of proportion. But we saw none of that. Everybody greeted us wonderfully. We met so many Americans while we toured Europe. We were in France during the 4th of July and I was wearing a

t-shirt with the American Flag on the front. The only comments I got were from people who thought it was cool.”

Karen, who also owns the “Silhouette Studio for Women” fitness center near the Albertsons Market on Main Street in Ramona, has taught 7th grade for 27 years. She said she felt the students now had an increased level of maturity from the kids of past years — which turned out to be a blessing on many fronts as the tour entered London from Paris by train on the afternoon of July 7. Barely one hour earlier, four bombs had exploded in London’s railway system — the largest act of terror and violence the city had seen since World War Two.

“We were only two blocks from where the bombings took place. If we’d taken the train an hour earlier, we would have been hit ourselves,” said Tom.

The tour was ordered to evacuate the train. Bomb-sniffing dogs were led on board their train as the passengers disembarked. The tour group had been split up into different cars while en route from Paris to London. When they were ordered to get off the trains, they managed to find each other and were able to gather together at a restaurant called “The Slug & Lettuce” — where the owners went out of their way to help the stranded travelers. “It was really amazing how calm everybody managed to stay,” said Tom — a communications engineer who’d traveled by train frequently in Europe while working for a news outlet covering the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona.

“Back then I traveled the Metro often. Barcelona was beautiful and the security was pretty minimal. Everything was wide-open.“

The irony of Tom’s pleasant experiences in Spain over a decade ago with what happened in London last month can be seen in the context of events since Britain and America joined forces to combat world-wide terror in the aftermath of the World Trade Center and Pentagon murders of September 11, 2001. On March 11, 2004, 191 people were killed in railway bombings in Madrid. July’s blasts in London killed more than fifty people, with the city’s entire metro structure shut down in scenes reminiscent of the Nazi air-raids Londoners experienced during the Second World War.

But the sheer stoicism of the British people in the wake of those attacks has impressed people throughout the world and been reported extensively in international media. Prime Minister Tony Blair spoke to his nation following the attacks and summed up that stoic courage with the simple refrain “we will not be terrorized.”

“The purpose of terrorism is just that, it is to terrorize people and … we will show by our spirit and dignity and by a quiet and true strength … that our values will long outlast theirs,” said Blair. “It's important … that those engaged in terrorism realize that our determination to defend our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people in a desire to impose extremism on the world. Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world.”

Both Tom and Karen said they saw first hand what Blair described in the British population’s determination to not allow terrorism to alter their daily lives. “I was just amazed at how resilient they all were,” said Karen. She was joined by Tom, who noted that the day after the attacks, the streets were packed and the kids on their tour were able to continue their trip seeing Big Ben, Piccadilly Circus and the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

Karen did observe that the kids were “more freaked out about what might have happened” than what they actually saw. And she said she was excited to use their experiences within the curriculum of the World History course she teaches when school resumes in September.“It will be exciting to talk to the students - to discuss the fact that these terrorists are not representing the religion of Islam, but are simply fanatics who are violating their religious teachings,” said Karen.

This echoed a conclusion Blair insisted should be remembered whenever terrorists of Islamic backgrounds strike at innocent citizens.

“The vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims, here and abroad, are decent and law-abiding people who abhor this act of terrorism every bit as much as we do,” said Blair.