ROSE

Rose was born
In the kitchen in the middle of the night
Was a miracle that she made it alive
She was fine

And I held her tight
Though I was just a little tike
And I could see a glowing light in her eyes shining bright
And I swear I saw angels in her eyes

When I was ten and Rose was five
Our mom got sick and she up and died
I don't know how and don't know why I don't know
My Dad was drunk and not worth a piss
Rose took care of our little sis
She was kind and fair and always there
She put French braids in Maevey's hair
And I swear I saw angels in her eyes

Rose grew up no ordinary girl
She was bound to save the world
The weak and the poor

Then Rose was gone
Her Greyhound left at dawn
Her passions tagged along
Maevey cried so did I
And I swear I saw angels in her eyes

From Africa to the Middle East
Her eyes stared down the evil beast
For women's rights and democracy defiantly she stood
With freedom's shadow by her side
Machine guns flashed and took her life
Clouds of doves soon filled the sky
And the people came from everywhere to touch her hair
And they swear they saw angels in her eyes

Rose came home to the Oklahoma sun
The white rose of Babylon
Her heart filled with love
And her death was wrong but her life was so right
Ray of Hope ray of light
In her eyes shining bright
Ray of Hope ray of light
Shining bright
Still with angels in her eyes

“I am determined to spend my life helping to create the most just and equal global society obtainable” - Fern Holland, an unsung American hero. Fern was a small town girl born in Bluejacket, Oklahoma outside of Tulsa, the youngest of five children and the product of a broken home. Thirty-three years later in 2003, she died at the hands of extremists near Hilla, Iraq where she had been building women’s centers and advocating for women’s constitutional rights in a culture in which women were uniformly oppressed. I first read about Fern in The NY Times in 2003 shortly after her death. Read it here. It was Fern’s vision that the road to democracy in post-Saddam Iraq necessitated the empowerment of Iraqi women. Her story and her journey was so powerful and so unlikely, I never forgot it. I stumbled into a mention of Fern in an article about the Arab Spring movement in 2016, and that brought me right back to her story, and eventually to writing the song “Rose.” In the song, I refer to her as “the white rose of Babylon.” I like that lyric. It is suggestive of the peace she tried to bring to the world, not just in the Middle East, but in Namibia and other countries where she established free legal aid clinics. For that reason, I decided to call her “Rose.” This picture of Fern was taken in Iraq shortly before she was killed. She radiates self-assurance and fulfillment. “If I die,” she wrote to a friend just weeks before her death, “know that I’m doing precisely what I want to be doing.” But there were angels in her eyes. Her sister Vi told me in an email “I still cannot believe she is not here with me. Time does not heal, with time we learn to live with the pain, with the huge hole in our hearts.” Fern Holland is an American hero no more unsung.