Shelby: Take precautions, but don't live in fear

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- You have to imagine the worst thing that can happen and take precautions, but you can't live in fear even despite the knowledge that America is vulnerable.

Those words and many others were imparted to the Minnesota TRIAD convention by WCCO-TV anchor Don Shelby on Wednesday night.

Shelby was the keynote speaker at the convention banquet at the Holiday Inn, capping a day-long event where TRIAD groups came from parts all around Minnesota. TRIAD is an organization of senior citizens, city and county law enforcement agencies designed to help seniors become better at protecting themselves. Conferees spent their time in sessions that dealt with topics ranging from caregiving to identity theft. The conferees also toured New Ulm by bus. The convention ends Thursday morning.

Shelby, a three-time Emmy award winner, began his remarks with a lighthearted jab at the document drama involving Dan Rather and CBS, WCCO's network. Shelby said he'd received some incriminating documents about Springfield Police Chief John Nicholson.

All joking aside, Shelby mainly talked about philosophy. He said his philosophy grew out of the wake of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, a day that changed the way he looked at himself.

"I thought I was a good example of a human being, but I realized that was mostly self-centered," he said.

Shelby found a great example in a man from Bloomington, one Tom Burnett, Jr., who died aboard Flight 93, which crashed into the Pentagon after airliners hit the World Trade Center towers in New York. Burnett was one of four passengers who got up out of their seats and tried to stop the hijackers. As he was talking to his wife on a cellular phone, Burnett said, "We're going to do something."

Shelby said that what he's learned in 40 years as a broadcast journalist is that the people who consider themselves to be somebody are often the people that make a difference.

Getting up out of our seats and doing something, Shelby said, is the new reality in the United States after 9/11.

He remembered the anthrax scare, where some of the country's top journalists were targeted for attacks using letters filled with the powdered version of the deadly disease. WCCO had a man in an hazardous materials suit checking its mail. A newspaper reported called Shelby and asked him if he was scared and the anchor replied "No" and the newspaper reporter asked "Why?" Shelby replied, "I don't think Osama Bin Laden has my address."

"When looking at threats, we have a tendency to forget what a good life it is," the anchor said.

He recalled where he was on the day President John F. Kennedy was killed. He was playing in a high school basketball game in Indiana that day. The coach refused to cancel the game. The arena was packed that evening and when the national anthem was sung, there wasn't a dry eye in the house, Shelby said.

He noted that crimes are usually committed by three percent of a population in any location. The math of that, he said, is that 97 percent don't commits crimes and 97 against three are great odds.

"Don't let the bastards win," he said.

The rising property values in north Minneapolis, a historically crime-ridden neighborhood, was another example Shelby gave. In that neighborhood, residents hold block parties and frequently talk to children.

Shelby also said vigilance is an important value. He told a story about an experience he had on State Highway 99. As he was coming to New Ulm, he was driving 65 miles an hour and a vehicle had pulled out into the middle of the road while another, oncoming car, which was also going 65 miles an hour, swerved not 30 yards from Shelby's car. He said he managed to avoid the car by going off the road and over a couple embankments and eventually got the car back onto the road.