To the editor:
Our Seymour High School Class of 1973 has lost 19.9% out of the 332 who graduated. Those confirmed at Lutheran churches in the school district lost only 13.9% of the 72 confirmed.
The Brownstown Class of 1972 had 150 graduates of which 21 passed away, a loss of 14%.
Yet both schools beat the 28% national average for 67-year-olds by a wide margin.
How did this happen?
The only logical conclusion: The rate of all denominational church attendance ties into the mortality rate.
The combined Cortland High School graduates from 1960 to 1965 only have lost 26% of their classmates.
This is far superior to the national average of about 45% of this age group.
How do other graduating classes of about 50 years ago compare to this? Are there other areas of the country getting better results than us?
See Page 10 of the Aug. 11 edition of The Tribune for the Brownstown results and the 1972 yearbook at the Brownstown library.
Hamilton Township, located in Cortland, also only had two murders during the last 150 years.
The population of the township averaged about 2,000 during this time. This put the murder rate at only 0.7 per 100,000.
Where else in the world has the murder rate been this low this long?
I grew up in Hamilton Township and didn’t know any family who didn’t have guns or hardly anyone who didn’t go to church.
Fifty percent of all murders happen in only 2% of the counties of the U.S.
Why do these areas have 10 times as many killed without guns as those in the most gun-saturated parts of the U.S. kill with guns?
Anthony Rust, Seymour