On the First Day of School

I’ve written this column before. It was about young people, about school, about death and about rainbows. The date was January 26, 1993.

A student named Demetrius Rice had just been killed at Fairfax High by the accidental firing of a gun brought to school for protection.

I visited the campus and heard the kids talk about how haunted the place felt after the killing.

They were afraid to go to school, parents were afraid to send them, teachers were afraid to teach and everyone else was afraid for all of them.

Guns were everywhere, the kids said. “I know I’m going to die in school,” an 11th-grader told me.

I quoted a poet back then, I can’t remember who, saying that youth is a time to clothe oneself in rainbows, not to stand in bitter darkness and ponder death.

But pondering it they were, these kids whose lives had barely begun.

Nothing has changed.

Since the death of Demetrius Rice, gunfire has killed or wounded students at schools in Chatsworth, in Reseda and in Southwest L.A.

And now a bullet has claimed the life of a 10th-grader at Hollywood High.

The scene is familiar: flowers and candles on the lawn, sadness and fear in the classrooms. Not just at Hollywood High, where they grieve for a 16-year-old named Rolando Ruiz. The grief is more widespread than that.

Our children everywhere are in jeopardy. Their rainbows are growing dimmer every day.

*

I write this column with special passion, because on the day murder came to Hollywood High, two very important children in my life went back to school at the end of their summer. Their names are Travis and Shana, and they’re my grandchildren.

Shana is in the second grade and Travis in the fifth, and the first day of school was a heady time for them. Metaphors abound in the ritual of returning to the classroom.

The passage of summer represents another step toward growing up, toward change and, through knowledge, to the lessening of childhood’s innocence.

Travis and Shana, brother and sister, seemed to sense that as they donned new clothes, helped pack their lunches and left, with glances backward, to the adventures that awaited.

I saw anticipation in their eyes, and I heard sadness in the goodbys they said to the toys of summer still scattered on their lawn.

Time passes so quickly, and only toys and teddy bears never age.

I understand their emotions. The first day of school at any level was always an ordeal for me. The end of summer was like the death of a friend. I was walking into a room full of strangers.

But at least there were no guns in school when I was growing up. There were no candles and flowers on the lawn, no tears in the classroom, no metal detectors, no murders on the campus.

It was a sweeter world for kids in my youth. The most violent we got was to engage in wild-swinging fistfights behind the bleachers. No one won, no one lost.

We had rainbows back then.

*

In researching this column, I spoke to teachers who suggested we have good reason to be afraid. Drugs and violence, passed from high school to middle school, are reaching down to the elementary level.

“We find marijuana in the pocket of some kids,” one fifth-grade teacher told me. “Others come to school smelling of the stuff. They all talk about finding drug paraphernalia in the rooms of their brothers and sisters.”

Another teacher said that even little girls are joining gangs, because that’s where strength and safety lie. That’s where tomorrow is.

Less sensitive observers were quick to point out that Rolando Ruiz was a gang member, and his murder in front of Hollywood High was a result of his own decision to be a partner to violence.

But it really doesn’t matter, in that sense, who the victims are. We all become victims when schools become too dangerous for our children. Fear is an equal opportunity emotion. It affects all cultures.

As time passes, it also won’t matter where you live. The devil will come to the deepest suburbs and breach the barriers of the most protected communities. Your parks and your patios will be no safer than an inner-city street corner.

Your schools will become extensions of the urban battlegrounds that already exist.

I worry about my grandchildren, and I worry about your children. We’re responsible for a generation wrapped, not in rainbows, but in funeral shrouds.

We can only stand and wonder, Good God, how did we let that happen?