Fight against bullies seems never ending

It seems I have been fighting bullies almost all my life, starting with my 240-pound tyrannical father. I have been so adamant about resisting bullies that in 2007 I wrote a book about them titled “Hillary and Other Bullies.”

Bullies come in many forms and sizes, starting with Cain and Abel; junior high school basketball players in Huntsville, Arkansas; the director of the Architectural Control Committee (ACC) in Bella Vista, Arkansas; and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia.

What amazes me is, what pleasure or gratification do these individuals get out of causing suffering of fellow human beings?

The bullying that occurred in the Huntsville Junior High School dressing room is only our most current example of senseless hazing. Colleges and universities have been doing things much like this for years. Most of us who are old enough remember the time after a football game between the University of Oklahoma and Texas in Norman when OU students painted a Texas student with red enamel and the Texas student died before he made it home.

As a freshman letterman of track and football at East Texas State University in 1955, I wanted to become a member of the “T” Association (Letterman’s Club). The initiation process included carrying a wooden paddle in our back pocket and allow all letterman of all sports to take three licks. After the first few rounds the rear end became black and blue and the ensuing strikes were almost unbearable.

Next, we were taken a couple of miles out of town and were made to walk stark naked back to our dorm. What could possibly go wrong with that? After that, we were required to do some things that were not to the level of the bean dipping or the baptizing that occurred in Huntsville Junior High, but the events were too graphic and repulsive to print in a family newspaper. I am ashamed that as a senior I was president of the “T” Association and had an opportunity to stop those things and I regret today that I did nothing.

Even the military has a hazing problem. While I was the officer in charge of medical services at Camp Ripley, Minn., one night at the Officers Club a group of artillery officers held a young second lieutenant (who had never had a drink of alcohol in his life) down on a table and poured triple sec down his throat. He died of alcoholic poisoning the next morning in our clinic.

Good for George Washington; Winston Churchill; and Volodymyr Zelenskyy for standing up against the tyrants. Sometime these bullies are in our own backyard. So, good for the members of the Bella Vista Patriots for keeping the Bella Vista ACC from removing all the white fences in Bella Vista. There comes a time when good men must stand against the bullies and say, “Enough is enough.”

Go away, ACC.

JIM PARSONS Bella Vista