Taking A Stand: Frontier can still show some heart
Like the post-Civil War South, carpetbaggers have again descended on Warren County, this time in the form of a phone company which is quick to take but slow to give.
Frontier should be ashamed of itself. They come down here to do business and one of their first acts is to list the address of our local battered women’s shelter in their phone book. This act jeopardizes the safety of everyone at the center as it reveals the exact address of the shelter, kept a close secret for 13 years. This is especially dangerous when you consider some of the alleged batterers are control freaks who would do just about anything to get back at their spouses, girlfriends or even employees of the center. Restraining orders mean nothing when you’re a nut.
And what does Frontier do when this error is pointed out to them? They try to pass the blame to Ben Lomand, saying their printing company sent their printing company the list. Frontier still denies any blame and, during a phone call I had with one of their agents in New York, they can’t even make assurances it won’t be printed again. I found their arrogance on the entire issue to be appalling and their apathy to be intolerable.
Their denial of blame is an insult to the intelligence of everyone in Warren County. It was their phone book. It wasn’t printed in Ben Lomand’s or even the former Citizens books.
It would be equivalent to the Southern Standard printing a story from another paper which was totally wrong, and then saying we had no responsibility because it was originally written in a paper other than ours. Please folks, we’d be laughed out of court.
That’s what gripes me about these faceless corporations which do business here. Sure, they love our money and they’ll eat up all the good publicity they can get. But, when it comes time for the buck to stop somewhere, you end up on the phone talking long distance with someone with an accent so thick you couldn’t cut it with a knife. I found it interesting that my office is next door to the Frontier office yet when I tried to call over there, my call was shifted halfway across the country. These big corporations are very adept at passing the buck endlessly.
What needs to happen is for Frontier to show they actually give a care about the people of Warren County and pony up the money to either beef up security at the shelter or purchase another house. I’m sure it wouldn’t even make a blip in their bottom line of what they make off the people of McMinnville every year. Of course, they won’t even issue an apology for the mistake, let alone accept any financial responsibility.
I’m a pessimist so I doubt Frontier does the right thing unless they are ordered to do so by a civil court, an action that could take years. Therefore, it’s up to us in Warren County to clean up their mess. We’ve got to come up with a way to either provide an armed security guard there at all times or move the shelter to a new secret location, one that doesn’t have a number published in Frontier’s phone book.
One local businessman I spoke to this week suggested that if in-kind donations were made by businesses, then perhaps a new location could be found for the shelter while the old house is sold on the market to offset some of the costs. It would need to be a community-wide effort. However, when you consider the alternative, we don’t have much of a choice. Victims of domestic violence must have a safe place to go to escape the bullies who have no respect for anyone. Maybe it would do some of the corporate weasels from Frontier good to come down and spend a couple of nights there.
(Duane Sherrill is a reporter for the Standard who can be reached at 473-2191 or by e-mail at [email protected].)