West Bloomfield Community Reacts to News of bin Laden's Death

As the news of Osama bin Laden’s death spread across the country late Sunday night and into Monday morning, West Bloomfield residents seemed to feel a need for a greater education on the subject.

“It’s a shocked reaction,” said Merrill Miller, who has lived in West Bloomfield since 1970. “Right now, the story I’m interested in is to see what other people say. I don’t have too many thoughts of my own; it’s more of, what’s going to happen next? I’m glad we got rid of the guy, but I have questions.”

President Barack Obama . The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks was killed during an attack Sunday at the compound where he was hiding in Pakistan. No Americans were harmed in the strike, Obama said, and bin Laden's body was taken into U.S. custody and later buried at sea. Islamic custom is to bury the body within 24 hours.

Questions were heard at , where fourth-grade teacher Scott Germansky said he quickly began a question-and-answer session with his students after hearing jubilation at the news early in the school day.

“I heard students coming in shouting, ‘Osama’s dead!’ That’s when I knew that there was an opportunity to learn, because that’s inappropriate,” said Germansky, 24, who graduated from . “I was in high school on 9/11, and parents of students who were Muslim American or could even be mistaken for being Muslim American were being pulled out of school for fear of safety. Here in West Bloomfield, we have a very diverse student population, and you need to make students feel comfortable as part of a community, especially at the elementary level.”

Residents echoed Germansky’s sentiments, including native New Yorker Lorna McEwen. Having known several Middle Eastern immigrants in her neighborhood, McEwen said the attacks and subsequent backlash felt personal.

“I think a lot about the situation in the Middle East because my neighbors are Lebanese and they’re terrific people,” said McEwen, who moved to West Bloomfield in 1966. “I think that the community on a whole probably thinks that this is a good day, not that you’d ever want to be happy with this sort of news, but it does mark the end of an era.”

Many of Germansky's students were born in 2001, the year of the attacks on New York City and Washington, DC. So he told his students that although they could not remember the events of 9/11, they would never forget the day bin Laden was killed. 

“A student asked me, did they fly the plane on purpose or accident? That just showed me they couldn’t understand the impact,” said Germansky, who lives in West Bloomfield. “So, we had an open dialogue, just to explain how terrible it was that Muslim Americans were fictitiously attached to those events … it went well. They said that they felt safer knowing they had a teacher to support them with any negative interaction.”

Questions continued throughout the morning at , where political debates went on between students studying and business associate meetings. Customer Mo Tinpan of Farmington said he was cautious, if not for himself, for the United States as a whole.

“You have to worry about a retaliatory strike,” Tinpan said while shaking his head. “These are the times that we live in. It’s not even paranoia any more, it’s just reality.”

After the West Bloomfield Township board meeting Monday night, Police Chief Michael Patton said that although there had been discussion about the possibility of a retaliatory strike and that extra patrols have been identified at points of critical local infrastructure, including religious institutions, shopping centers and schools, no demonstrations or suspicious incidents had taken place since the news broke.

Trustee Larry Brown said he was "pleased" to hear the news of bin Laden's death. Brown, a former member of Enlighten America at B'nai B'rith International, said he hoped bin Laden's death would offer new opportunities for communication.

"Hopefully, we can see our world come together and people communicate with one another in a civil manner and not killing each other," Brown said. "We all pretty much have similar backgrounds. We have to try to understand everyone’s backgrounds and we need to work on that diversity."