Trinity of Faith, Firearms, Family Frame Town’s Grief

If there is no threat of backlash, no sense of blame or betrayal about two local families who may have produced two young mass murderers, it is because rage requires strength, and this is a town bedridden with a broken heart.

The oldest myth about disaster has come true here. Typically, after a twister or a train wreck or some other tragedy, people will say that the entire community is devastated, even though many have been spared, and even now, human nature being what it is, many couldn’t care less.

But now, here, the exaggeration feels like an understatement. Nearly everyone is visibly heavy with grief. Hardly a soul has slept. Almost no one has made it since Tuesday without breaking down at least once and sobbing. If every flag is flying at half-staff, so are residents--heads down, eyes down. They don’t so much walk as droop.

“We’ve all been abused psychologically,” said one pastor, trying to explain the malaise that moved in along with the tornado weather.

“I’m tired of not being able to watch the news without crying,” said Barbara Robbins, 39, one of countless red-eyed Jonesboro residents who no longer opens the papers or turns on the TV.

“We’ve been sad all week long,” said Sharon Goodon, owner of the Goodon Monument Co., which has cut the stones that have marked the places of the dead in Jonesboro for more than 60 years, and which will likely get some unwanted trade out of this week’s tragedy.

As convoys of hearses and funeral cars created traffic snarls around town, Sharon and her husband, Leon, and their son, James, sat around their business offices, amid floor samples of their grim product line, and they talked about Tuesday’s shooting spree at Westside Middle School that left four girls and an English teacher dead and 10 others wounded.

*

Like the majority of residents, the Goodons knew some of the victims and their families. Like most people, they know the families of both young boys accused in the attack. And like so many of their neighbors, the Goodons are just too bereaved to assign blame.

Still, more than sadness is working on them. They’re also deeply affected by empathy and faith. Jonesboro residents love three things above all others: Guns, God and each other. It’s a tangled triangle of old loyalties that keeps them from feeling more than overwhelming sorrow.

For instance, much of the nation was aghast to learn that the suspects in Jonesboro had learned to handle firearms at an age when other children learn to wield fly rods. In Jonesboro, though, an 11-year-old and a 13-year-old who are crack shots don’t make headlines. This may be a “dry” town, where you can’t buy a beer, but you can buy as many deer rifles as you please.

“Heck, you gave me my first .410 when I was 9,” James Goodon said to his father, Leon.

Yes, his father remembered. He also remembered the bigger guns he gave James as the boy got older. Nothing strange in that; age is gauged by the gauge of your latest weapon.

“People say, ‘How could these kids get into a gun cabinet with 20 or 30 guns?’ ” Leon said, smiling. “Well, I’ve got a gun cabinet with 20 or 30 guns at home. And I’ve got a gun on top of my bureau. And I’ve got a gun between my mattress and my bed.”

Outsiders also reacted with alarm to the fact that both Jonesboro suspects wore camouflage outfits during their rampage. But around Jonesboro, camouflage is as American as the flag. Men wear camouflage caps to the stores and young boys wear camouflage to school. In three weeks, when turkey hunting season starts, camouflage will be as common around town as spring flowers.

And around Westside Middle School, the gunfire will crackle once again.

“It’ll sound like war around there,” said Leon Goodon, pointing toward the hills that surround the school.

So beloved is hunting in Jonesboro that many ask the Goodons to adorn their headstones and footstones with engravings of guns. The grandfather of 12-year-old Paige Ann Herring, one of the little girls killed Tuesday, arranged for a picture of a hunter on his headstone, raising the possibility that Paige Ann, who the Goodons say was buried Friday alongside her grandfather, may have a rifle aimed at her for all eternity.

*

Asked if guns contributed to Tuesday’s tragedy, however, farmer Steve Yant didn’t need much time to think.

“No, no, no, no, no,” he said. “Guns have been around for years and this hasn’t happened.”

If there is great stock put in the right to bear arms, there is even more put in the power of prayer, and the religious streak of Jonesboro has been its other bulwark against rage. Known as “The Community of Churches,” one pastor said, Jonesboro means business when it says things like, “There but for the grace of God,” and “Turn the other cheek.”

One religious leader thinks the startling lack of blame aimed at parents of the suspects means the community isn’t shirking its own responsibility.

“If we’re angry at anyone, we’re angry at ourselves,” said Fred Haustein, pastor at First United Methodist Church, which has 2,100 members. “We’re angry at ourselves that we did not realize in our midst there was a problem, that we were not more prepared.”

*

If any blame or anger is left over, it’s reserved for media members, whose attempts to deflect public distaste for their presence have made the situation worse. Some reporters try to tout their “solidarity” with local residents by wearing large white ribbons on their chests. Others are even less subtle.

When he returned home one day, one Westside student had 82 messages on his answering machine from people wanting to interview him, Haustein said.

On Tuesday, one week after the shooting, Haustein will help lead a memorial service expected to draw more than 11,000 residents, who will pray and sing and listen to sermons. Maybe then, he said, the community can experience a moment of uplift.

“We’re not all the same. We come from all different faiths, all over the theological spectrum. But we feel a commonality. Something like this reminds us of that.”

Haustein said he’s been proud to watch the town begin healing without the rage seen in other places where violent acts have been committed. And he thinks an added component of the overwhelming sadness in the town is shame.

*

“This was not an outside group of terrorists,” he said. “These were our own children. This is our own community. And that hits home the way few things can. It says something about us. It makes us introspective.”

At times, the introspection erupts in tears. At one local radio station, a young employee tapped into that wellspring of despair when he tinkered with the theme from the movie “Titanic”--a ballad about loving people who are no longer here.

Chad Davidson, 24, program director at KIYS-FM, interspersed the song, “My Heart Will Go On,” with clips of wrenching interviews conducted just after the shooting. In the lulls of the lush music, he inserted the panic, the grief, the first sketchy news reports, and the sound of men sobbing as they described children dying in their arms.

“I set about to tell the story,” he said, “and it has reached a tremendous amount of people. We’ve had hundreds of calls from friends and relatives of the victims.”

At a news conference to introduce the new version of the song, a state senator tried to say a few words, but the contrast between Celine Dion’s soaring vocals and the sound of local residents trying to control their voices under excruciating circumstances was more than he could bear. He had to be led away from the podium, Davidson said.

“I want people to understand the message,” he said. “It’s so sad this had to happen. I just wish at 12:35 somebody had caught these kids with their guns. Instead of at 12:41 all hell breaking loose.”

* LAST VICTIMS BURIED

Schoolteacher, 2 more young girls are laid to rest. A20