It was Friday, December 6th
, 1963, (exactly 2 weeks after President Kennedy was assassinated.)
Our school day ended at 3:15PM; always
did throughout my junior and senior high school years. While in recent times
our local high schools are released at 2PM, the school day begins much earlier
now than when I was in school.
As it had for literally dozens and
dozens of years, the old school bell rang out its daily blessing, (and believe
me the end of the day was considered a blessing to all but the most studious of
Summerlin’s students.
My friend, David, and I hurried out of
the classroom, stuffed a couple of textbooks and other miscellaneous papers and
pencils in our lockers, and hurried down the covered, outside hallway to catch
Bus 149. We’d rode that bus for as long as I remember, though I would be hard
pressed at this juncture, to tell you the driver’s name, or even his or her
gender. But I expect that particular individual has long since gone on to their
reward; (or lack thereof.)
Our buses parked adjacent with
Broadway, one of Bartow’s major streets. There was a stretch of asphalt,
perhaps thirty feet wide and a hundred feet long, which paralleled the street.
Every weekday, twelve or fifteen buses rolled up about 3PM and parked in
perfect rows, empty for the moment, but ready to receive the teaming masses of
loud, and sometimes obnoxious students, eager to get home.
Just as David and I reached the end of
the covered walkway
…
it happened.
Suddenly, slightly diagonal and to my
left, I witnessed a car leaving the road. The front end slammed against the
back bumper of a school bus, hitting it a glancing blow. I stood there
transfixed, having just stepped onto the bus tarmac. So like those nightmares
in which one feels incapable of moving, I stood there speechless. David stood
as immobile as I.
And rather than stopping, the car
accelerated and gathered speed. As the late model automobile neared my friend
and me, one option presented itself. And while what was occurring around me was
far from humorous, I knew I had to “get the heck out of Dodge.” But I wasn’t going alone. Not by a long shot.
When the vehicle was eight or ten feet away, I grabbed David’s right arm and
jerked him away from the trajectory of the automobile. The vehicle passed so
close, I sensed the change in air pressure, and I might easily have touched it.
We might have been its first victims.
I immediately turned to follow the
car’s progress. It had transcended the pavement, now, and was rushing headlong
through a long strip of grass which bordered the tarmac. What I saw now both amazed and confounded me.
The front end of the vehicle plowed into a fellow student, and he almost seemed
suspended in midair a moment, before crashing against its windshield.
If I live to be 103, I shall NEVER forget the events of that day. I
witnessed everything, at least everything I had any intention of witnessing,
since in the space of a few seconds, I had reached a momentary, though very
conscious decision to avert my eyes from those things which were happening
around me.
The entire affair was over in less than
a minute, but it may as well have been a year in terms of its cruel impact on
countless human beings. As I discovered later, approximately 15 students were
struck, plowed under, and/or dragged by the wayward vehicle. It has been
reported that one young man pushed a couple of girls out of the path of the
car, was somehow impaled by a concrete post, and subsequently dragged across
another stretch of pavement.
As it the facts played out, an elderly lady
had been driving her husband home from a doctor’s visit. He had contracted a
terminal illness, and no doubt, Mrs. F. was naturally distracted from the task
at hand. As she lost control and slammed into the rear of the school bus, one
mistake compounded into another, and instead of braking and bringing the
vehicle to rest, she engaged the accelerator.
Rex was the only fatality. The other
students sustained varying degrees of injuries, including broken arms and legs,
but all experienced “full recoveries.” Yet I think the psychological and
emotional impact of that event was geometrically greater than any physical
trauma my classmates endured, and resides with them a half century later.
My mother has told me that as I walked
into the house that day, my normally dark complexion seemed several shades
lighter, and without so much as a word, she knew something terrible had
occurred.
As a substitute teacher, I have the
opportunity to serve in numerous primary and secondary schools in our district,
and I occasionally teach at my alma mater. Sometimes I share the events of that
long-lost day with my students. Sometimes I don’t. But when I do, I am so often
met with the sense that it has been too long, and my pupils are altogether
unable to relate to my story, and I think it simply passes over their heads.
And I think they’d rather employ their time with cell phones and I-pods and pop
magazines, and all that other peripheral stuff that fills up an adolescent
life, than consider anything so ancient as a story that has no relevance to
them, though it occurred within feet of where they now sit.
But there are those among us who will
never forget, and there are those among us who will recite the story again, and
I like to think there are still those among us who have taken time to
memorialize that day in a genre, (such as the written word) which endures.
Nonetheless, I can only wonder whether
this account might be the last surviving, full account of that terrible day,
and if by chance it is, I am glad I am given the opportunity to entrust it to
you, and leave it to your care.
If you wish to share, copy or 'save', please include the credit line, above
********
Due to a design flaw on this blogsite, if you would like to see the titles and access hundreds of my blogs from 2015 & 2016, you will need to do the following:
Click on 2015 in the index to the right of this blog. When my December 31st blog, "The Shot Must Choose You" appears, click on the title. All my 2015 blogs will come up in the right margin.
Click on 2016 in the index to the right of this blog. When my December 31st blog, "Children of a Lesser God" appears, click on the title. All my 2016 blogs will come up in the right margin.
If you wish to share, copy or 'save', please include the credit line, above
********
Due to a design flaw on this blogsite, if you would like to see the titles and access hundreds of my blogs from 2015 & 2016, you will need to do the following:
Click on 2015 in the index to the right of this blog. When my December 31st blog, "The Shot Must Choose You" appears, click on the title. All my 2015 blogs will come up in the right margin.
Click on 2016 in the index to the right of this blog. When my December 31st blog, "Children of a Lesser God" appears, click on the title. All my 2016 blogs will come up in the right margin.
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