Letter to the Editor, Dr. Richard Burry, Quick County Coroner (outgoing)

Letter to the Editor, November 2, 2010

Dr. Richard Burry, Quick County Coroner (outgoing)
Office of the Coroner, Quick County, Idaho

Good folk of Quick County,

I am not one to beat a dead horse. I may examine it, even marvel at it. But as life is brief, so shall I be. Tonight we have lost the race for reelection to the office of County Coroner. I am possessed of mixed emotions. It hurts too much to laugh, but I’m too old to cry.

Yet today’s loss reflects neither upon me nor those who voted for me. Nor does it reflect upon those whose deaths necessitate the grave work we conduct here in the basement of Quick County General Hospital; rather it is a reflection upon the current trend in Quick County politics and those who endorse it. To have embraced such a trend may have spelled a different ending for this effort instead of its demise. But I will not take the low road to the highest office in this county merely to sit in the lowest level of this building among even lower ideals. The greatest blessing of my life was to have been born in Quick County, and I will never dishonor the county I love or myself by letting ambition overcome principle. Never. Never. Never.

We have fought to the last breath, all within the code of ethics laid down for us by the founding fathers who settled our land but did not settle for avarice, and who now lay under the fertile grasses of Mt. Pleasant Cemetery. I am glad for this layer of time and earth which has shielded them from the declining view of their beloved county. But their apotheosis of Quick County’s humanitarian ideals remains unsoiled, and we may be proud to uphold their enduring tradition even in the face of defeat. As George McGovern said, “every bone-crushing moment was worth the sacrifice”. This is Quick County. Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done. The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

Then there are those who have allowed their eyes to be sewn shut to the distasteful practices of my opponent, your coroner elect. To you, I’ll not belittle your lack of wisdom at the end of this campaign, but I believe I must prepare you for the changes which are surely to come. From my professional perspective, they are:

1. During my time in office, I have held steady the rate of live interment of those mispronounced dead to one in one thousand persons. These numbers have been in steep decline in the past two centuries, true enough, but you never had to fear that I might be the one whose incompetence might signal a return to these most embarrassing sorts of errors.
2. Speaking of the competence and character on which you have come to not only rely, but take for granted, I now feel you should know that my opponent obtained his credentials from St. George’s University School of Medicine in Grenada, a training ground known for its white sand beaches and frozen cocktails, but not as well-known as a rigorous challenge for those aspiring to be the keepers of life and death. Perhaps this kind of overseas “degree-in-a-box” makes sense from the point of view of ease, but to you as voters it should give you pause – you may never require the services of a County Surveyor, but all will eventually pay a visit to this office. How will you feel when you have been harvested for the black market organ trade and defiled to the point of a closed-casket ceremony? It is true; see below.
3. In his previous office in another state, your coroner elect – a non-native of Quick County – was thrice investigated for the practice of unauthorized organ donor card forgery, and once censured by the American Medical Association for selling unclaimed corpses to be used as medical school cadavers. Why did I not bring this to the fore? I set out to conduct a vigorous campaign based on my qualifications and ethics, not on mudslinging my opponent’s dark past. My challenger, however, exercised no such restraint in his campaign. Read on.
4. The bugging of my offices, a charge which the coroner elect denies, provided only a dark lens into the bowels of his empty morals. The autopsy recordings obtained, when taken out of context and disseminated over the airwaves, would doubtless sound cool and callous to the good folk of Quick County, as he knew they would. In particular, comments such as “twelve on a ten-point scale of ugly”, though icy to the ear, are standard clinical references to which colloquial interpretations should not be attached. Moreover, my singing of “The Old Gray Mare Is Dead” in some lengthy repetition is made to seem inappropriate somehow. If I was given the courtesy a moment of your reflection instead of flaming bags of feces on my doorstep after the debate in which these confidential recordings were released, however, simple math would remind you that it was the on following evening when my barbershop quartet, Four On The Floor, performed at the Kiwanis Club. Such rote rehearsing not only enhances a performance which many of you enjoyed, but is also a tool for maintaining concentration in my work. I regret that some of you took the lyrics “Took out my knife and I ripped her skin” and “Took it home and I put in the ooze / Saved it to make my winter shoes” as direct references to your loved ones. I can assure you this was not the case.

Though dim is the light underground here at Quick County General, I can see with heart-stopping clarity as I write this letter mourning the even more dimly fading soul of Quick County itself. We may no longer enjoy the Eden of Innocence in which we once lived; instead we pass over into the fearful half-light of that cold cosmos which you, the good folk of Quick County, have “elected” to now join – the outside world and its cynical political character.

My bulletin board is bare. My photos are boxed. My scalpel and sternum saw are shelved. I have but one last sad duty to perform. With great hope I have listened for the quickening pulse of Quick County, yet I have heard only its slowing crawl to a final diastole. Fellow citizens, I have pronounced the spirit of Quick County, Idaho dead as of 10:27 PM MST, November 2, 2010.

Regretfully Yours,

Dr. Richard Burry, Quick County Coroner (outgoing)

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