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It was Friday, December 6th, 1963; (exactly 2 weeks after President Kennedy lost his life on the streets of Dallas.
Our
school day ended at 3:15PM, as it 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 into 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 his or her 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.
By William McDonald, PhD. Excerpt from "Concepts, Teachings, Practicalities & Stories" Copyright pending
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If you would like to see the titles and access hundreds of my blogs from 2015, 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 blog titles will come up in the index
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If you would like to see the titles and access hundreds of my blogs from 2015, 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 blog titles will come up in the index
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