Our unsung hero for today is
Antoinette Tuff, a school bookkeeper at McNair Discovery Learning Center, an
elementary school in Decatur Georgia, who talked a man who came into her school
with an AK47 and enough bullets to kill at least half of the 800 children there
that day, into giving himself up before anyone was killed. It happened on
August 20, 2013. In her book, Prepared
for a Purpose, she gives credit to God for what she was able to do that day, and she believes that she was in that
place and time, as Mordecai said that Esther was, filling in for the front
office secretary during lunch, because she was somehow able to find the words
and the tone to keep this young man from carrying out his plan. She also makes it
clear that she was only able to do that because this man came in talking, while
most shooters come in shooting. And she does not believe in arming teachers. She
said if she had had a gun that day, in the mental state she was in and he
was in, they would likely all be dead.
Antoinette Tuff has not had an easy
life. Her father abandoned the family when she was 2. When she was 10, her
mother got cancer. She survived, but with the cost of the treatment, she couldn’t pay the rent, so she and
Antoinette were homeless for 13 months. Her son was born with multiple
disabilities which got worse as he grew. and she is his caregiver. A few months
before her ordeal on this day, she found out that her husband, the only man she
had ever loved or been with, was in love with someone else. She was so
distraught that she tried to and almost succeeded in killing herself. And less than five minutes before the gunman
walked in the door, she received a call from the bank telling her that her
bankruptcy repayment plan was being cancelled due to lack of payment, and that
if she didn’t come up with $14,000, which she didn’t have or have any way
of getting, in 10 days, she would lose her house and her car. But it was
because of all these trials, she says, that she was able to relate to the
gunman, who, she learned from her time with
him, was self-loathing, had given up
hope, and planned to kill himself after killing
everyone else.
The gunman came in agitated and
shouting, “We are all going to die today,” and she says she had never been so
afraid in her life. Minutes later, another staff member, unaware of what was
happening, walked into the office, surprising the gunman, and he started
firing. The man fell and Antoinette thought he was dead, but the bullets had
landed just to the right of him. The gunman told him to get up and go tell
everyone what was happening, and he ordered Antoinette to get on the intercom
and announce it, then to call 911 and a news helicopter so that everybody could witness it. While
she was on the phone, the gunman opened the front door of the school and began
shooting at the police who were arriving. At that moment, when he was
distracted, she could have run out the back door. She wanted too. But she was paralyzed with fear. She said, “I
tried to move my feet but nothing happened. If I didn’t run now, I might never
get another chance. The gunman finally stopped shooting and walked back into
the front office, and I was still there, behind the desk. Turns out, I wasn’t
supposed to run.”
She watched as he filled five
magazines with bullets and stuffed the rest, hundreds more, into the pockets of
his cargo pants. He began pacing back and forth, then called someone on his
cell phone, his mother. He said to her, “I’m
the person on the news. They are going to kill me for what I did. I shot at the police.” Antoinette said she
surprised herself by jumping into the conversation. She told him that he didn’t
have to die. That no police had been
killed. But he wasn’t listening to his mother or her. He went to the door and
started shooting again. And she heard herself yell to him, "Sweetheart, come
back in here. It’s gonna be you and me, and we will work this thing out
together.”And even though he was bleeding from being cut by flying glass, and
seemed on the brink of losing all control,he did as she said. He came in, and for
close to an hour, whenever he appeared calmer, she talked to him. He said to
her, “I don’t care if I die. I have nothing to live for. I’m mentally unstable.
I’m not on my medication. I should just shoot myself.”
She told him about her trials, how
just a two weeks before, she had pulled over on a busy highway, got out, and
walked through two lanes of traffic hoping she would be killed and how the next week, she had asked
a friend how to get a gun because she could not bear the pain of living any
longer. She told him that God was with her then and that God was with him now. And
that there were people who could help him. And eventually, he said, “I don’t
want to hurt no kids. I want to go to
the hospital.” She was able to get him to put his gun on the desk and lie on
the floor. The police came in and arrested him.
No one died.
She said that what she believed
finally reached him was her compassion for him. She said, “He needed someone to
listen to him. The person there was me. Though he spoke with hatred, I listened
with love. Though he struggled, I saw his worth. And though he dwelt in
darkness, I searched for his spark” She was practicing that 23rd
Psalm that she read every morning.
Ms. Tuff’s idea of God and God’s role in the
world are a little different from mine, but I understand hers, as she is a
Baptist and I was a Baptist, and I admire her faith and the courage and
compassion that it gave her to save all those children that day. When Modecai
asked Esther to do what was right for her people because
she was the only one who was in a position to do so, she was afraid that if she
did, she would be killed. Mordecai said to her, “Maybe you were placed here for
such a time as this. Antoinette Tuff believes with her whole heart,that she was
placed in that front office for such a time as this, and at the end of her
book, she challenges us to be on the lookout and be prepared for the
opportunity to be there for someone who needs us. May we accept the challenge.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our first
reading is by school bookkeeper Antoinette Tuff, on the day that a gunman
walked into her school.
A short
stocky, 20—year-old man, who lives on a wooded street in Decatur, gets up and
dresses all in black. He opens his backpack and fills it with several boxes of
bullets, until he can fit no more. He loads another magazine into an AK 47
assault rifle that can shoot more than 5 hundred rounds in less than a minute.
It’s one of the deadliest weapons in the world. He drives to
the McNair Discovery Learning Academy, waits for someone to walk out, then
sneaks in. He turns right at the first room he sees, the front office. Its door
leads to a hallway that leads to the classrooms of hundreds of children, who
are sitting at their desks or writing on chalkboards, innocent, unaware, in
more danger than they could ever comprehend.
Because this man is inside their school, holding his weapon with both
hands, waving it at me. He yells, “We are all going to die today.”
He only had
to shoot me to get to his first classroom filled with children. All that will
take no more than 3 or 4 seconds of time, the slightest tug of the trigger, and
then will come the nightmare, the hell, the recurring horror—Columbine,
Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook, and McNair will become “McNair.”
As I sit
there, hands trembling, heart racing, I ask one simple question:
“God, what
are we going to do now?”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our second
reading is Psalm 23, which Antoinette Tuff read every morning before going into
work.
O God, you
are my shepherd. I shall not want. You make me lie down in green pastures. You lead me beside still waters. You restore my soul. You lead me in right paths for your name’s
sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil, for you
are with me. Your rod and your staff,
they comfort me. You prepare a table
before me in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil. My
cup overflows. Surely, goodness and
mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in your house
my whole life long.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our third
reading for today is from the book of Esther, chapter 4.
Esther sent
her servant to talk to Mordecai, who told him that the king was planning the
destruction of the Jews and to ask Esther to go to the king, her husband, and
entreat him for her people. Esther replied, “All the people know that if any
man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, all
alike are put to death.” Mordecai replied, “If you keep silent for such a time
as this, deliverance for the Jews will rise from another quarter, but you and
your father will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for
just such a time as this.”
Esther
replied, “I will go to the king, though it is against the law, and if I perish,
I perish.”
No comments:
Post a Comment