GRANT COUNTY ELECTIONS

Reader withholds votes because of history

Our American history documents a large massacre of pioneers in a wagon train headed West to California from Arkansas in September 1857. There were several thousands of dollars in 1857 standards stolen from these slaughtered victims, plus several heads of livestock. Investigation would reveal that the group that carried out this massacre was headquartered in Salt Lake City at LDS Church headquarters, and under the direction of that sect's leaders. Men, women and children victims were shot point blank and their bodies were left to be consumed by the forces of nature. To this day some 150+ years later the LDS church has never apologized for this massacre and steadfastedly refuses to allow any of us relatives to go in and give our relative victims of this attack any kind of mainstream Christian burial. My late great-grandfather A.B. Thomason's sister and her husband, Martha and William Cameron, were also victims of that massacre.

Fast forward to Grant County elections in 2010. We are being asked to vote for a district court judge and a non-incumbent Grant County Coroner of the same religious ilk of those that carried out that massacre in Utah over 150 years ago. As a relative of two of these victims, I can think of a much better "reward" for these members of that sect.

Donald R. Thomason

Moses Lake