Roberta Winter Institute

Part of the War on Evil
Ralph D. Winter

My wife’s final ordeal (October 2001) right in the middle of all the consternation about the new global war on terrorism has meant a double upheaval for me. At times the panic on the TV screen (in the Intensive Care Unit waiting room) could hardly distract me from another very different kind of “distraction.” “Things would never again be the same.” Right. In my case, for two reasons.

I found myself during the first 28 days of October, every day almost all day in that Intensive Care Unit, thinking, praying, consternating, as my wife of almost 50 years steadily passed out of this life. I could not avoid pondering two different kinds of terrorists: big and very small. The latter being far more dangerous.

The “big” terrorists, the human-sized terrorists, thanks to Sept 11, are well-known by now. They are apparently sincere but aggrieved and deadly dangerous Muslims.

The actual facts on both sides are not well known to the average American. But as with Pearl Harbor, Americans are in for a crash course. This time a course on Islam (and maybe a parallel course on a comparably mixed Christian record.)

But while the world is now shocked into consternation about the “big” terrorists, I wish there could be as lurid an awareness of the far greater danger of another kind of “terrorists” too small to see with the naked eye.

Our Center in Pasadena, my life, the life of the Roberta Winter Institute will all be radically and irretrievably different.

In my case I am now in the early stages of a major activity I want to tell you about, that is, what may now happen as a result of my wife’s five-year ordeal—I am very sure she did not die in vain.