{"id":6156,"date":"2014-07-13T03:00:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-13T03:00:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2014\/07\/13\/cassidy-personifies-courage\/"},"modified":"2014-07-13T03:00:38","modified_gmt":"2014-07-13T03:00:38","slug":"cassidy-personifies-courage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6156","title":{"rendered":"Cassidy personifies courage"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>The current Bravest Person in the World is a 15-year-old Texas girl named Cassidy Stay.<\/p>\n<p>She has just witnessed the worst act of cruelty any human being can ever imagine: the slaying of her entire immediate family, her parents and her four siblings, ages 4 through 13. Cassidy also was a target of the shooter. She was hospitalized in critical condition but she&#8217;s now out of the hospital.<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2014\/07\/12\/justice\/texas-shooting\/index.html?hpt=hp_t1<\/p>\n<p>Cassidy today stood before friends and family members gathered at a memorial service and quoted Dumbledore from the Harry Potter stories. &#8220;Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times,&#8221; Cassidy said, citing J.K. Rowling&#8217;s &#8220;Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,&#8221; &#8220;if one only remembers to turn on the light.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>How does anyone &#8212; let alone a teenager &#8212; stand before the world and offer comfort to the rest of us?<\/p>\n<p>Cassidy lives in Spring, a Houston suburb. Ronald Lee Haskell is charged with capital murder. He allegedly barged into the Stays&#8217; home and opened fire. He was seeking his estranged wife, who wasn&#8217;t in the house.<\/p>\n<p>Her strength and courage defy description. &#8220;I know that my Mom, Dad, Brian, Emily, Becca and Zach are in a much better place, and that I will be able to see them again one day,&#8221; Cassidy said at the gathering.<\/p>\n<p>My goodness. How does one summon the strength to say such things in public so soon after witnessing what no one ever should witness?<\/p>\n<p>The nation should pray for this little girl. I&#8217;m doing so right now.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The current Bravest Person in the World is a 15-year-old Texas girl named Cassidy Stay. She has just witnessed the worst act of cruelty any human being can ever imagine: the slaying of her entire immediate family, her parents and her four siblings, ages 4 through 13. Cassidy also was a target of the shooter. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=6156\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Cassidy personifies courage<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2037,2066,2196,2383,4376],"class_list":["post-6156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gun-violence","tag-harry-potter","tag-houston","tag-j-k-rowling","tag-spring-texas"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6156\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}