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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 as early as 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, 17
students were struck, or dragged by the wayward vehicle. One
young man pushed a couple of girls out of the path of the car, was somehow
impaled by a concrete post, 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. Hamilton" 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.
"Johnny" 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.
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