My Experiences with Gun Violence
I. My niece who went by the name of Dabi had a string of bad husbands. Her last one told her that he expected her to support him. She left with her two children and stayed in hiding at her friend's. He figured that Dabi would visit her Mother on Xmas eve. She did and he followed her back to Dabi's friend's residence. She arrived, stepped out of her car. He quickly shot her in front of her two children and left. She was declared dead Xmas morning. The incident was on the front page of the second section of the Toledo Blade. He turned himself in but pleaded not guilty but was found guilty and sentenced to 30 years. I think he should have received life imprisonment because it was pre-meditated. Dabi's Mother, my younger sister will be reminded of this every Xmas.
II. Back in 1968 a female friend of mine killed herself with a gun she had bought. She had attempted suicide many times, left on the gas stove though she knew friends were to arrive, later she cut her wrist, and later overdosed with tranquillizers. The last mentioned put her again in the mental hospital, from which she again escaped.
III. Bob Z was a nice intelligent guy. I had lost touched with him around 1971 or 1972. He used his Father's shotgun to killed himself. I think hard drugs were involved.
III. I owned my own taxicab for a while. In the summer of 1973 a young man, Daryl Georgia, had just started driving nights for me. He was robbed and shot dead. He had just started his shift and had only some change.
IV. Around May in 2015 I visited a friend in a nice neighbor on a bright spring day. As I exited my car in the drive way, I noticed two youths walking down the street. One said to me that they couldn't find an address. He quickly walked up to me, and I found myself looking at a small handgun pointed at my face. "Give me your money," he commanded. I said, "I don't have much." He said, "Shut up!" I opened my wallet, and he grabbed about $11. They quickly ran off up the street. I knocked at my friend's door; She screamed briefly when I told her what had occurred in her driveway. I called the police who came soon since it involved a gun. The two fools were caught the same day and I identified them; they were on a spree. They each were sentenced to 11 years.
V. I was usually lonely as a youth. I wished I could find a friend my age. There was a new student at my high school, Thom Eckman, who walked home the same direction I did and we talked. He was one year behind because he had spent a year in Spain with his Mother. We seemed to have some common interests like folk music. He played the banjo when every else, it seemed, played the guitar. He was smart and iconoclastic like me but more witty. There is much detail here that I am leaving out for the sake of brevity. Like me his parents were divorced; his Father taught English at BGSU. Thom was able to skip the graduation ceremony so he could leave Toledo to start school at the U. of Texas. I will always remember his Mother's and my seeing him off at the airport. He was carrying his banjo in its case and walking in a humorous manner emphasizing his lankiness.
On August 2, 1966, I was in New York city with my Mother and two sisters. We were having lunch at a restaurant. I had bought a newspaper to read about an incident in Austin the previous day. It was the front page's main headline. I joked that I wanted to check to see that Thom wasn't among the dead. I opened the paper to page three, saw a list of names. I gasped and my whole body jerked. I lowered my head and had a few tears. Asked if Thom was among those killed, I nodded. Later that day I was with an older friend and smoked some pot or whatever for the first time; I felt nothing.
It was considered the first mass shooting in the U.S. in the 20th century. There wasn't another one for several years. I researched and found that Thom was the first person shot and killed from the tower, unless one counts the fetus in the womb of Thom's friend. She survived though. He was not the father.
A few days later we went to Cape Cod. I looked out into the darkness over the ocean and sang, " Fair thee well, my rambling boy; may all your ramblings bring you joy."