What I know about Walter Backstrom came through in what he wrote in the Federal Way Mirror. I never had the pleasure of meeting him face-to-face before he died under humble circumstances at the Union Gospel Mission. I thought I would like meeting him and telling him how right on I thought his views were.

At this juncture in our culture where issues concerning race should have been wiped out by now but continue to present themselves for political, economic and personal advantage, Walter must have felt like a lone salmon swimming against the rapids. He had the guts to put his views in writing, while some of us read them and secretly agreed. Political correctness was not an obstacle for Walter’s pen.

Mr. Backstrom told it like it was and is, like Bill Cosby tells it, like Walter Williams tells it, like Thomas Sowell tells it, and like Martin Luther King told it. He is among an elite group of truth tellers.

Many a prophet died pauper’s deaths.

Matt Sato, Federal Way