I still remember it almost as vividly as I remember yesterday, in some ways it's even more vivid. It was a pretty average
September day for me in 1995. I was running late for 7th grade as my
parents helped me put the finishing touches on a Social Studies project. I felt
awful that I had procrastinated (yet again) and missed the bus, forcing my
mother to drive me all the way out to school – a good twenty minutes or more out in the
rural countryside and the opposite direction from her work.
As the first class
change came that day I was showing my project to a friend and walking slowly,
far behind everyone else and bound to be late for our next class when another
girl we knew came racing around the corner of the building. I can still
remember her strawberry-blonde curls flying out behind her and the panic
stricken look on her face as she raced past us screaming that someone had been shot. At first
I thought it was some sort of bad joke, convinced that things like that only
happened in the movies, not in real life and certainly not in towns as small
and close-knit as I thought ours was. Her words were confirmed moments after in
the look of terror on our school secretary’s face as she screamed for everyone
to get inside the classrooms.
We waited, locked in the
classrooms for what seemed like an eternity. The only thing we knew for sure was that there was a gun and someone had been shooting. The teachers tried desperately to keep
things as “normal” as possible. For the students that were in the right place
that meant a few poorly timed jokes followed by some busy work. My two friends that were with me tried to work on homework. I wasn't so lucky and there was nothing
for me to do aside from wait so I began to write and pour out my heart on paper
writing a poem that still to me captures the tumult of emotions I was experiencing.
After what seemed like hours the official announcement came that there had been
a shooting. Nothing more was said then but everyone was gathered to the cafeteria and in the days before
everyone had a cell phone the few that were found were eagerly passed around as
we all tried to contact our parents and arrange to be picked up.
By the time we left the
outside world knew more about the situation than we did. As it turns out, a
14-year-old boy brought a gun to school and fatally shot another student who had only been 13. I had been within 30 or 40 feet from the end of the building where I would have been a first-hand witness. At
first the investigators said it might have been a personal grudge or even a
racist attack. There was some strong suggestions of gang-activity. In the end
it seems like it was just a tragic case of a youth who was mad at the world
finally reaching a breaking point.
As the students and staff of the school
tried to pick up the pieces amidst the grief counselors, television reporters,
and instructional sessions from police I thanked my Heavenly Father for the
blessings that He had given to me through all of it. As I look back now I am
even more grateful for the things I was able to learn even in the middle of all
the turmoil.
The first thing I
learned is that we can never show too much love or kindness to someone else. As
I sat waiting to know what happened my first thoughts were for my classmates
and friends. I didn’t know if I’d see them again. Were my last words to them
words of kindness and love or had I been mean and rude? Would I ever get the
chance to let them know what they meant to me?
I learned that we never
know who is hurting inside and needs our help. I rode on the same bus pretty
much every day as the boy who brought the gun to school. As often as I had seen
him I had no idea that he was capable of such violence. Others that were closer
to him knew a little more of his aggressive nature and struggles with drugs and
the like but from a distance I only saw an average 14-year-old boy.
I learned how much we
all need to understand the plan of salvation. I went to a lot of the grief
counseling sessions with my friends. Many of them were much more traumatized by
what had happened than I was. They had questions and desperately needed the
answers that the gospel provides. I still remember getting a tear-filled phone call
from one of my friends one evening. We drove out to her house and my mother sat with her and tried to explain
what happened to our spirits and our bodies after we died. I don’t think I had
realized before then just how fortunate I was to have grown up knowing that we
can live again with Heavenly Father.
Today as I read an
article from the newspaper back home that marked 20 years I also learned that
as adults we can make a difference. Shortly after the shooting the schools
began a program for school resource officers. The idea was that they would work with the students
and form a relationship with them so that they would feel more
comfortable going to someone if there was a need for help. I never realized
that the officer that came to our school day after day and befriended everyone
with the perfect blend of authority and approachable humor and kindness was one
of the officers that had arrived on scene to help apprehend the shooter and
then been the lead investigator in the case. He decided that he would do whatever he could to help prevent this from happening again and made a very real difference in the lives of many of the students there.
Perhaps the greatest
lesson for me in all of it was simply that God knew me and He loved me. I was
just a little 12 year old girl but on that day there were so many things that
happened to protect me and show me that He was in control. A few of them might
be able to be explained away by some people as lucky coincidences. Others
simply can’t be explained unless you believe in His all loving power.
Each of us faces trials
and challenges every day. In the months that followed there were four more untimely and tragic deaths from our school. Since then we’ve seen Columbine, 9/11, Virginia Tech,
and Sandy Hill. We’ve also seen local police and military officers attacked, innocents
suffer, and devastations from war and natural disasters around the world. Then
there are the thousands of personal struggles that we each experience in our
own individual lives. Many of them, like this, have the power to change us
forever. Heavenly Father has told us though that all our trials will work
together for our good if we can trust in Him. I know that this is true. I may
have lost a lot of my childhood innocence that day and had to struggle for a
time with feelings of fear and uncertainty but I learned so much more.
Looking back I can say
with absolute certainty that because of my own trials and experiences I know that God
will bless us even when things look darkest if we can have faith in Him and
keep looking for the good.
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