Twenty years ago, a dear friend of mine was shot six times and killed at our high school. She was my cheerleading partner, my partner-in-crime, my church youth group buddy, and a dear friend. I am lucky to be here today as well, since the person who killed her could easily have shot me.
By the luck of fate, I remembered to go to Coach Lorenzo’s room that January afternoon after cheerleading practice. My friend Norma—who was also in trouble with Coach Lorenzo for being late to his anatomy class because we flirted with boys in the hallway a bit too long after the bell—forgot to show up. After cheerleading practice, I remembered I had to go for my “punishment” to discuss why I was chronically late. I sat with Coach Lorenzo waiting for Norma, who had just rehearsed with me only ten minutes earlier in practice—she had the daunting job of lifting me for stunts. We waited for only five minutes and then a kid from school came rushing in, yelling.
The rest is somewhat of a blur. I ran as fast as I could out the door and up the sidewalk that led past the track field and to our parking lot. When I got there, Norma’s royal blue Spitfire was parked just across from my less than chic twenty-five-year-old Saab I’d named Rex. Her arm was dangling over the doorframe. The boy who shot her was racing out of the parking lot, a huge cloud of dust rising from his truck in gulfing clouds. His best friend, holding a sharp knife, was waiting—and I can only imagine that he was waiting for me, as he and his friend used to take pictures of Norma and me when we did stunts together at games (typically inappropriate pictures as I usually had my leg lifted, or Norma was in a straddle jump, you get the idea).
I’ll never know for sure what he was doing there with a knife. Since he said he was going to go after his friend who had just shot Norma, I just took his knife away from him and told him to go. My body was on remote control. It was happening to someone else. I’m sure everyone felt that way. My best friend Debra, who was getting into her car parked quite far away in the parking lot, says she just remembers hearing something that sounded like an engine backfiring and seeing David’s truck rushing out of the lot a few minutes later. I decided to go to Norma’s house and tell her family before someone else did. I’ll never forget the look on her mother’s face as I walked in—she just knew and collapsed. To this day, she can’t see me without feeling that exact moment.
I’ll also never forget going with them to the hospital and seeing the hordes of disgusting TV photographers racing to get pictures of the family’s grief—of anyone’s grief—before they even had a chance to digest the information, identify their daughter, or talk with a doctor. I’m a journalist and I vowed that day to never be an ambulance chaser—never to exploit unnecessarily.
Every year, children are dying by their young peers with guns, or by adult men who are able to open the front door of schools and walk right in. It’s tragic and it’s a trend that isn’t slowing down. We can point to violence on TV, or to the disintegration of the American family, or to the isolated and negative feelings common to young boys, or to the easy access to guns in our country. We can point to a host of reasons, but none of them makes a difference to the families and friends whose lives are forever altered.
School violence is a horrendous problem in our nation and the solutions seem short- sighted and not easily adaptable. Can we afford to put metal-detectors in all schools? Would that stop an armed man from storming in anyway? Do we resort to camera surveillance and locked-down entrances? Should the PTA raise money to pay for armed guards? These seem like radical steps. But when gun violence reaches middle-America from Durham, North Carolina where I was raised, to small towns in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, California, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arkansas, Minnesota, Colorado—all states with school shootings or bombings over the past fifty years—and now, the worst one in history happening in Virginia—parents are left feeling helpless.
After two shootings in October of 2006, President Bush vowed to address the issue. Now with an election looming, how will we, as a nation, begin dialogue? I certainly don’t know what the answers are. I do know that living in Europe for the past two years has certainly opened my eyes. Here in London there is violence—but typically from a drunken man wielding a knife. It’s hard to kill thirty or more people in that scenario. School violence occurs too, but not by children or men armed with guns. It makes a huge difference that guns just can’t be purchased at any corner store here in Europe.
It will be interesting to see if presidential candidates will begin talk of instituting national waiting periods for more thorough back-ground checks before gun purchases. As a southerner, I always expect the South to be mired forever in indecision from pressure from the gun lobby and our traditions. What do you think? Should we have longer waiting periods? Do you feel that would keep our kids safe in our schools? Or is this such a complicated issue that points further to our violent culture? Sound off, I’d really like to hear your thoughts.
[Editor’s note: At the time this article was originally published, in December of 2006, in a span of a week, one gunman killed himself and five girls at a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania; a man took six girls hostage in a Colorado school, sexually assaulting them before fatally shooting one girl and killing himself; and a fifteen year old Wisconsin student shot and killed his principal. For a timeline of school massacres and shootings, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting]
