Sunday, October 4, 2009

The ACA Shooting Six Month Anniversary

Yesterday, amidst all the Rod Serling events, the 6 month anniversary of the American Civic Association shooting came and went.

Six months.

Spring was just coming to the Southern Tier, fall now touches us.

Some of us feel a whole lot less safe.

The Broome County library, where Jiverly Wong spent a lot of his time, remains without (in my view) adequate security.

Although I did not know any of the victims personally, a friend knows the teacher who would have been teaching the class where the massacre took place  on that day, except it was a special wedding anniversary for her.  She asked Bobbie King to substitute for her, took the day off, and the rest was tragic history.

Bobbie King's widower, who is a local doctor, will be putting their house on the market soon.

What is it like to be a survivor of such an experience?  Can we even begin to put ourselves into those shoes

"Never forget the innocents".

What is it like to have a Facebook Common Interest Group called "Pray for (your home town)"? Well, Binghamton does. 

This is how we finally got on the national map.  Not for spiedies, not for Endicott Johnson shoes, not for Rod Serling or Richard Deacon or the late cartoonist Johnny Hart.  We will be known always as the small uptown city where a troubled immigrant took matters into his own hands, went to a local sporting goods store, bought guns, and shattered tens of lives forever.

The man who may have sold him the murder weapons got fired for going to the media.  What has happened to him?  Has he found another job?

Rod Serling, you would not have written such a script in your wildest dreams.

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