Letter to Dear Abby in Granite : Jill Turner, 11, Makes a Statement for the Ages

When Jill Turner was 3 years old, she stopped some teen-agers who were making fun of a Down’s syndrome child by marching over and announcing: “You must realize handicapped people have feelings, too, and you are hurting this person’s feelings. You must stop.”

A few years later, her mother said, whenever Jill saw an able-bodied person park in a handicapped parking place, she would remind the person that he or she had prevented a disabled person from getting out.

She shunned grade-school softball for baseball because “there weren’t enough women” on the baseball team.

And now the sixth-grader from Fountain Valley has made a statement for human rights that may be immortalized in granite. Her message is: “Just because you are against something doesn’t give you the right to decide for everybody else.”

Her aphorism first appeared in Abigail Van Buren’s syndicated Dear Abby column in November.

Jill, who reads the newspaper daily, was responding to a letter from a woman who was prevented from donating her organs after death because her relatives refused to sign permission papers. She wrote: “I am 11 years old and have already decided that I want to donate my organs after I die. That lady in Texas should tell her family, ‘Just because you are against something doesn’t give you the right to decide for everybody else.’ ”

Van Buren responded: “Dear Jill, thank you for stating a principle that deserves to be carved in stone. . . .”

Monday the Dear Abby column contained a reply from an Oregon woman stating she would see to it that Jill’s words and her name are indeed carved in stone.

Becky Rust, Mrs. Oregon of 1985, explained that a 210-acre park dedicated to “centuries of American wisdom” is scheduled for completion next year near La Grande, Ore. The park will contain a monument of 67,460 granite-faced stones, each inscribed with a patriotic or personal message. Rust, 31 and the mother of two, said she was so impressed with Jill’s remark that she paid $129.95 to have the quote inscribed verbatim on one of the stones.

‘Elimination of Ignorance’

The column contained another letter, from Anthony Pierulla of St. Philip’s College in San Antonio, Tex., saying: “Jill’s letter not only brought tears to the eyes of this jaded old educator, renewed my hope in our youth and made my day, but it convinced me that this little lady should be appointed to head a presidential committee for the elimination of ignorance in the United States. . . .”

Earlier Van Buren had sent Jill a book of her collected columns and a check for $100. The book was inscribed: “The world desperately needs more people with your sense of justice and human rights. . . .”

Monday, in addition to calls from the media, Jill received a call from the owner of a bookstore in Maryland promising to send her several books. “They thought a child that thoughtful should be rewarded,” said her mother, Liz.

The first child of Liz Turner, a homemaker and former nurse, and C. J. Turner, an aeronautical engineer at McDonnell Douglas in Long Beach, Jill is a gentle and shy 11-year-old who knows as much about computer programs as Cabbage Patch dolls. She collects the dolls, rocks and coins. She and her 6-year-old brother, Jared, also have nine pets including a lizard, a hamster, a chinchilla, a Siamese cat, two guinea pigs and two rabbits.

Youthful Sage

Sitting in an overstuffed chair in her parents’ modest condominium, Jill stroked her guinea pig, Pigmalion, and basked self-consciously in her sudden fame as a youthful sage. She might be President, she allowed, but would rather write books, or become a reporter or psychiatrist when she grows up. She paints in oil and belongs to the 4-H. But most, of all, she said, she likes to read and write.

At school, Jill is known as an independent thinker and gifted student, said her teachers. She taught herself to read--with the help of “Sesame Street”--when she was 2, her mother said. In the first grade, she was writing creative stories using her own dictionary, said Sandy Cambron, her first-grade teacher at Monroe Elementary School in Fountain Valley. This year, she created a newspaper for her classmates in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) class. Several students contribute stories that Jill enters into her parents’ home computer, prints and distributes.

Interview With Teacher

Volume I includes “People About Monroe,” a story by Jill about her teacher, Louise Winders. It reads: “Mrs. Winders, the imminent (sic) sixth-grade teacher at James Monroe Elementary School agreed to be interviewed by this reporter. Your correspondent, armed with many penetrating questions, met with Mrs. Winders in Room 11. It is hoped that the information elicited will help one and all in understanding this unusual woman. . . .”

The media attention she has received will also benefit her schoolmates by showing that observation and writing can bring positive results, said Principal Don Ewoldt. The $100 from Van Buren is in a college fund in the bank and the family plans a trip to Oregon to see the 700-pound stone with Jill’s name.

Jill wrote Dear Abby on her own, said her mother. “I had no idea whatsoever that she wrote at all. It was a total surprise to me.” She said she found out the day her daughter’s letter appeared in the paper and a neighbor called. “She gets strongly moved and wants to act. She’s thinking about writing to (President Pieter) Botha in South Africa. The more she reads, the angrier she gets.”

Mistreatment of Handicapped

Both parents have strong feelings about human rights, said Liz Turner, a civil rights activist in the ‘60s. But along with the rest of the family, Jill became particularly sensitive to mistreatment of the handicapped when her brother Andy was born, Turner said. Andy, who was born with multiple handicaps, died last August at age 9.

“She hated to see Andy in pain, or people not seeing Andy as she saw Andy. It really bothered her when people saw his handicap more than his little smile,” Turner said.

“She did have a strong relationship with this little boy. He would do things for her that he wouldn’t do for me or the therapist,” Turner said.

A quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, Andy could not see or lift his head. “When Jill said, ‘Andy, lift your head,’ he would at least try. When we finally placed him at a facility (for the multiply handicapped), the staff would use the threat, ‘I’ll tell Jill if you don’t eat.’ It was effective.”

In her letter to Dear Abby, Jill had noted that his corneas had been donated to an organ bank and were now helping a blind person to see. That knowledge, she said, made his death a little less painful.

“A lot of people make fun of people for being handicapped,” Jill said. “I learned from Andy that people can be other things without being strong and able to walk and things.”

True Meaning of Love

Liz Turner said she and her husband have learned the true meaning of love from their children.

When Jill was 3, she and her parents began discussing the inevitability of Andy’s death. “She developed a philosophy at that time that you have to give all the love you can give to somebody and get all the love they can give you. That way, the love would always stay inside, and even if they died, you’d always have that person with you.”

She said she has learned from Jill’s words of wisdom since her child was 2. Then, Liz Turner was just learning to accept Andy’s handicaps.

One day, cradling her crying infant, Turner broke down crying. “She comes up and says, ‘Mommy, why are you crying?’ I said ‘I’m crying because Andy can’t see or move. He probably won’t ever be able to move.’

“She said: ‘Why can’t we love him anyway? Can’t we love him for what he can do?”

All children make wise comments, Turner said. “A mistake parents make is that they don’t listen to what their children are saying.”