Rubbish article. Absolute garbage, I'm sorry I read it.

Scars never fade
Memories of a massacre: 17 years ago, a 27-year-old drifter opened fire at a Stockton elementary school, killing 5 children and wounding dozens. In light of the recent horrors at other schools, C.W. Nevius spoke to some who were there.
- C.W. Nevius
Wednesday, October 4, 2006

Seventeen years ago, third-grader Viseth Siem was having a bad day at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton. He'd gotten into a silly disagreement with another kid about a stolen pencil, and the teacher had grounded him for recess. He had to sit in the classroom and watch his best friend, Raphanar Or, run out on the playground with 200 other youngsters.

"And then what I heard,'' Siem said Tuesday, "was gunshots like a jackhammer.''

Patrick Edward Purdy, a 27-year-old alcoholic with a gun fetish, had picked that day to return to Cleveland, his old school. He carried an AK-47 and enough ammunition clips to kill anyone he saw. When Lori Mackey, who taught hearing-impaired students at Cleveland, looked out her classroom window, Purdy was holding his rifle at his waist, spraying the playground with bullets.

"I will never forget the look on his face to the day I die,'' Mackey said. "It wasn't anger. He wasn't sad. There was just no emotion.''

When we hear about this week's shootings at the Amish school in Pennsylvania, or the others from Canada to Colorado in the last few months, we react with shock and fear. We want to hear about the victims, we sympathize with the survivors, and we wonder about the sick mind that did something so awful.

Eventually we get caught up in the next news cycle, the next scandal or tragedy. We move on.

But those who were there can never move on. Not completely.

"It is something that changes you forever,'' Mackey said, "and in ways you maybe can't explain. It takes away your blind faith. I know this: No one can tell me anymore that nothing is going to happen, that everything will be fine.''

Officials would later estimate that Purdy unleashed as many as 100 rounds in two minutes on Jan. 17, 1989. When the gunfire stopped, four girls and a boy, ranging in age from 6 to 9, were dead. Twenty-nine students and a teacher lay injured. Purdy waited until he heard police sirens, then put a bullet in his head.

It would be hours before Viseth realized that Raphanar was dead. Viseth's mother, Sovanna Coeurt, remembers rushing to the school and being asked to translate for the parents, most of whom were Cambodian. Parents were directed to a nearby church because there were still bodies on the playground.

Coeurt was pushed to a lectern, handed a list of names and told to read them aloud for the parents. She still has that list today and remembers causing a brief panic when she paused before reading the names to search for the names of her two sons, Viseth and Vichet. They weren't there.

She also remembers going home that night with her boys. Nine-year-old Viseth came to her with a question about his friend, Raphanar.

"How can I ask God to bring him back?'' Viseth wanted to know.

As strange as it seems, that was one of the toughest problems counselors and teachers faced in the days after the Stockton shootings.

"One of the things I was most stunned by,'' Mackey said, "is that we had to tell the kids that it was real. We had to tell them that those kids were not getting up. Those bodies we stepped over on the way to the cafeteria, those were real. Our kids couldn't separate the fact from the fiction.''

Vichet Siem, three years older than his brother, described the scene as surreal. "I remember in the days afterward, playing it back in your mind. I remember a dream I had where I was a policeman, and I came in time to save everyone.''

There was counseling and conversation, but the long-term effects of this kind of sudden, random violence seem impossible to overcome.

"I will never, never forget about it,'' Coeurt said. "We had some families that never recovered from it. They never healed. The scars were too deep.''

Ram Chun was just 6 years old when she died. Today, her brother, Ran, has come back to Cleveland and is a teacher. He's also deeply involved in the Cambodian community. Coeurt calls him "a model for all of them.''

But others said his family went through hell. Ram's father, despondent, had personal problems and died before his time. The rest of the family has fractured and broken. Only Ran has been able to hold it together.

Ran politely declined to speak about his experience.

"I just don't talk about it anymore,'' he said.

It is a common reaction. Everyone I spoke to said the same thing. There is a bond among those who experienced this that cannot be explained. And when the pictures of those teachers and parents in Pennsylvania or Colorado came on the TV screen, there were those in Stockton who relived it all.

In the days after the shootings in Stockton, Mackey said they were visited by two teachers and a principal from a school in Illinois that had experienced a tragic shooting.

"And for me, that's what started to turn it around,'' Mackey said. "I wish there was some way that those of us who have been through this could go to that school in Pennsylvania and offer just some kind of hope. Just say, 'Life will go on.'

"Because I have been watching, and I see those faces. They are just trying to make sense of it all. And I've been there, and I want to tell them, 'You can't. You just have to keep going.' ''

C.W. Nevius' column appears regularly. Read his blog and listen to his podcast, News Wrap, at SFGate.com. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.

Page A - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGI9LHUQR1.DTL

Scars never fade
Memories of a massacre: 17 years ago, a 27-year-old drifter opened fire at a Stockton elementary school, killing 5 children and wounding dozens. In light of the recent horrors at other schools, C.W. Nevius spoke to some who were there.
- C.W. Nevius
Wednesday, October 4, 2006

Seventeen years ago, third-grader Viseth Siem was having a bad day at Cleveland Elementary School in Stockton. He'd gotten into a silly disagreement with another kid about a stolen pencil, and the teacher had grounded him for recess. He had to sit in the classroom and watch his best friend, Raphanar Or, run out on the playground with 200 other youngsters.

"And then what I heard,'' Siem said Tuesday, "was gunshots like a jackhammer.''

Patrick Edward Purdy, a 27-year-old alcoholic with a gun fetish, had picked that day to return to Cleveland, his old school. He carried an AK-47 and enough ammunition clips to kill anyone he saw. When Lori Mackey, who taught hearing-impaired students at Cleveland, looked out her classroom window, Purdy was holding his rifle at his waist, spraying the playground with bullets.

"I will never forget the look on his face to the day I die,'' Mackey said. "It wasn't anger. He wasn't sad. There was just no emotion.''

When we hear about this week's shootings at the Amish school in Pennsylvania, or the others from Canada to Colorado in the last few months, we react with shock and fear. We want to hear about the victims, we sympathize with the survivors, and we wonder about the sick mind that did something so awful.

Eventually we get caught up in the next news cycle, the next scandal or tragedy. We move on.

But those who were there can never move on. Not completely.

"It is something that changes you forever,'' Mackey said, "and in ways you maybe can't explain. It takes away your blind faith. I know this: No one can tell me anymore that nothing is going to happen, that everything will be fine.''

Officials would later estimate that Purdy unleashed as many as 100 rounds in two minutes on Jan. 17, 1989. When the gunfire stopped, four girls and a boy, ranging in age from 6 to 9, were dead. Twenty-nine students and a teacher lay injured. Purdy waited until he heard police sirens, then put a bullet in his head.

It would be hours before Viseth realized that Raphanar was dead. Viseth's mother, Sovanna Coeurt, remembers rushing to the school and being asked to translate for the parents, most of whom were Cambodian. Parents were directed to a nearby church because there were still bodies on the playground.

Coeurt was pushed to a lectern, handed a list of names and told to read them aloud for the parents. She still has that list today and remembers causing a brief panic when she paused before reading the names to search for the names of her two sons, Viseth and Vichet. They weren't there.

She also remembers going home that night with her boys. Nine-year-old Viseth came to her with a question about his friend, Raphanar.

"How can I ask God to bring him back?'' Viseth wanted to know.

As strange as it seems, that was one of the toughest problems counselors and teachers faced in the days after the Stockton shootings.

"One of the things I was most stunned by,'' Mackey said, "is that we had to tell the kids that it was real. We had to tell them that those kids were not getting up. Those bodies we stepped over on the way to the cafeteria, those were real. Our kids couldn't separate the fact from the fiction.''

Vichet Siem, three years older than his brother, described the scene as surreal. "I remember in the days afterward, playing it back in your mind. I remember a dream I had where I was a policeman, and I came in time to save everyone.''

There was counseling and conversation, but the long-term effects of this kind of sudden, random violence seem impossible to overcome.

"I will never, never forget about it,'' Coeurt said. "We had some families that never recovered from it. They never healed. The scars were too deep.''

Ram Chun was just 6 years old when she died. Today, her brother, Ran, has come back to Cleveland and is a teacher. He's also deeply involved in the Cambodian community. Coeurt calls him "a model for all of them.''

But others said his family went through hell. Ram's father, despondent, had personal problems and died before his time. The rest of the family has fractured and broken. Only Ran has been able to hold it together.

Ran politely declined to speak about his experience.

"I just don't talk about it anymore,'' he said.

It is a common reaction. Everyone I spoke to said the same thing. There is a bond among those who experienced this that cannot be explained. And when the pictures of those teachers and parents in Pennsylvania or Colorado came on the TV screen, there were those in Stockton who relived it all.

In the days after the shootings in Stockton, Mackey said they were visited by two teachers and a principal from a school in Illinois that had experienced a tragic shooting.

"And for me, that's what started to turn it around,'' Mackey said. "I wish there was some way that those of us who have been through this could go to that school in Pennsylvania and offer just some kind of hope. Just say, 'Life will go on.'

"Because I have been watching, and I see those faces. They are just trying to make sense of it all. And I've been there, and I want to tell them, 'You can't. You just have to keep going.' ''

C.W. Nevius' column appears regularly. Read his blog and listen to his podcast, News Wrap, at SFGate.com. E-mail him at cwnevius@sfchronicle.com.

Page A - 1
URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...NGI9LHUQR1.DTL

Dear Savage Dad,

You see this article resonates with me. On Thursday I saw my now 21 year old niece. She was an elementary School Student on the Campus the day of the shooting. She had three children in her Apartment complex killed by Patrick Edward Purdy. I went there with my exwife to get her out of the malestrom of the Press, grieving Parents, the wounded, emotionally distraught. His article about the Moral Free Fall is 100% correct in my experience.

Please enlighten me as to why he is incorrect? Is it being Politically Correct? It now turns out that Women who have Abortions are more likely to get Breast Cancer. How does that help Women? In the US we have aborted nearly 50 Million Babies. And for what so Women would not be incovenienced? Are they not Adults? Can they not use prudent Judgement in their choice of Impregnators?

When you degrade Babies as Tissue Masses and dehumanize them, the next logical conclusion is that young Children are disposable as well. What is their value after all. They are a drain on resources, time, education costs, medical costs, noise, mess. Women as a result are killing their children in record numbers, sexually preying upon them as Teachers and Mothers. And their behavior is excused. The Poor Things so stressed, so oppressed. Can't you see its evil Men making their life more difficult???

Dear Savage Dad,

You see this article resonates with me. On Thursday I saw my now 21 year old niece. She was an elementary School Student on the Campus the day of the shooting. She had three children in her Apartment complex killed by Patrick Edward Purdy. I went there with my exwife to get her out of the malestrom of the Press, grieving Parents, the wounded, emotionally distraught. His article about the Moral Free Fall is 100% correct in my experience.

Please enlighten me as to why he is incorrect? Is it being Politically Correct? It now turns out that Women who have Abortions are more likely to get Breast Cancer. How does that help Women? In the US we have aborted nearly 50 Million Babies. And for what so Women would not be incovenienced? Are they not Adults? Can they not use prudent Judgement in their choice of Impregnators?

When you degrade Babies as Tissue Masses and dehumanize them, the next logical conclusion is that young Children are disposable as well. What is their value after all. They are a drain on resources, time, education costs, medical costs, noise, mess. Women as a result are killing their children in record numbers, sexually preying upon them as Teachers and Mothers. And their behavior is excused. The Poor Things so stressed, so oppressed. Can't you see its evil Men making their life more difficult???

I agree that the United States is suffering a moral 'free fall' as you call it, however why I dismiss this article is because it takes a very real issue and then proceeds to postulate freely as to causes. There is absolutely no evidence that, for example, teaching evolution in schools creates a moral vacum.

Consider, for example, that Japan, Australia, England and Germany have a population that is somewhere around that of the united states. Their collective crime rate is substantially lower, particularly regarding murders and gun crimes and all of these countries teach evolution in their schools and have been doing so for longer and on a broader base than the united states has.

I don't want you to think I'm setting myself up as an enemy for you, because I honestly could not agree more that there is a palataple sense of moral decay in the majority of the first world.

I agree that killing children is wrong. I do not agree with abortion as a contraceptive choice.

Please enlighten me as to why he is incorrect?

I cannot proove to you that he is incorrect. However he has taken no steps to present proof that he is correct. He has, further, made steps in his reasoning that are simply not logical.

expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

To say that God has been replaced with evolution is foolish. Creationism, as a concept, has been replaced with evolution, as a concept. Creationism does not encompass Christian ethics and morality and evolution, morality and ethics are not mutually exclusive. Draw from this that teaching evolution in schools is not a logical evidence to foreward regarding the moral vacum.

Furthermore this man's six word definition of evolution is not only too succinct it is downright incorrect. Evolution teaches that the advantaged, be this advantage intellectual, asthetic or physical, drive the disadvantaged into obsolescence. Evolution is not a replacement for God; it describes a reactionary behavioral logic that influences the growth and changes a species may exhibit. The strong do not kill the weak; this is an attribute of predation (something even the religous aknowledge as being a real part of life) rather the weak are out performed; this is a fact of any competetive environment, capitolism is a competetive environment, anything containing a heirarchy (Governments, Churches, Social Groups) behaves along simmilar lines. It is not immoral, it is not unethical; if you believe it, then you beleive that it simply is. You do not live your life by it! To declare that a system of ethics could be built around evolution is no different to saying that a system of ethics could be built around Boyle's Law, another scientific absolute they teach in our schools. Why not blame it for moral decay?

Furthermore he ignores the simple fact that many modern-day Christians do not believe that evolution and christianity are mutually exclusive concepts.

Regarding your notes on abortion and the entire contents of the second post, I have no comment; my remarks were directed entirely at the first post.

Yes, a moral free-fall exists.

Yes, something must be done about it.

To direct your energy against a single scapegoat, and to mantain your position with idealogically driven arguments you will find yourself pitching camp one row down from the radical femenists, who do the very same, and who are responsible for so many social ills.

I agree that the United States is suffering a moral 'free fall' as you call it, however why I dismiss this article is because it takes a very real issue and then proceeds to postulate freely as to causes. There is absolutely no evidence that, for example, teaching evolution in schools creates a moral vacum.

Consider, for example, that Japan, Australia, England and Germany have a population that is somewhere around that of the united states. Their collective crime rate is substantially lower, particularly regarding murders and gun crimes and all of these countries teach evolution in their schools and have been doing so for longer and on a broader base than the united states has.

I don't want you to think I'm setting myself up as an enemy for you, because I honestly could not agree more that there is a palataple sense of moral decay in the majority of the first world.

I agree that killing children is wrong. I do not agree with abortion as a contraceptive choice.

Please enlighten me as to why he is incorrect?

I cannot proove to you that he is incorrect. However he has taken no steps to present proof that he is correct. He has, further, made steps in his reasoning that are simply not logical.

expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

To say that God has been replaced with evolution is foolish. Creationism, as a concept, has been replaced with evolution, as a concept. Creationism does not encompass Christian ethics and morality and evolution, morality and ethics are not mutually exclusive. Draw from this that teaching evolution in schools is not a logical evidence to foreward regarding the moral vacum.

Furthermore this man's six word definition of evolution is not only too succinct it is downright incorrect. Evolution teaches that the advantaged, be this advantage intellectual, asthetic or physical, drive the disadvantaged into obsolescence. Evolution is not a replacement for God; it describes a reactionary behavioral logic that influences the growth and changes a species may exhibit. The strong do not kill the weak; this is an attribute of predation (something even the religous aknowledge as being a real part of life) rather the weak are out performed; this is a fact of any competetive environment, capitolism is a competetive environment, anything containing a heirarchy (Governments, Churches, Social Groups) behaves along simmilar lines. It is not immoral, it is not unethical; if you believe it, then you beleive that it simply is. You do not live your life by it! To declare that a system of ethics could be built around evolution is no different to saying that a system of ethics could be built around Boyle's Law, another scientific absolute they teach in our schools. Why not blame it for moral decay?

Furthermore he ignores the simple fact that many modern-day Christians do not believe that evolution and christianity are mutually exclusive concepts.

Regarding your notes on abortion and the entire contents of the second post, I have no comment; my remarks were directed entirely at the first post.

Yes, a moral free-fall exists.

Yes, something must be done about it.

To direct your energy against a single scapegoat, and to mantain your position with idealogically driven arguments you will find yourself pitching camp one row down from the radical femenists, who do the very same, and who are responsible for so many social ills.