A few months before our 10-year class reunion, the world's lens zoomed in on Jonesboro for several days after four middle school girls and a teacher were shot and killed by two boys at Westside Middle School on March 24, 1998. I remember how weird it was to see people and places I knew on TV 24/7. I also recall the crushing sadness that enveloped me.
I remember the day vividly because, as an assistant editor for the Batesville Daily Guard, I was at the school a little more than two hours after it happened. The school was cleared of students, parents and teachers by the time I arrived, but it was still heart-wrenching: bulletholes in the brick walls, blood stains on the sidewalks, and the constant whir and hum of news helicopters circling the school.
The Columbine High School shooting in Colorado followed a year later, and just last April, I was again working in the middle of the world's biggest news story when 32 students and faculty were gunned down, before the shooter killed himself, at Virginia Tech, just 30 miles from my Roanoke, Virginia, home.
I longed for our high school days when Mr. Williford was about all the security we had. Did any of us ever really think something like Westside or Columbine was possible back in 1988?
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