If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

WHEN I FIRST reached out to those who survived the shooting at Bethel Regional High School, I struggled to get a response. A small community in Bethel, Alaska, the students, staff, and teachers who were there the day Evan Ramsey brought a shotgun to school and killed a classmate and his principal, seemed to be unreachable. I researched the story, sent emails, still nothing. For weeks. Then, a response. Two responses. Three responses. Yet in their response, there was a hesitancy. How did you get my name? How did you find us? What will this be for?

One of the most interesting responses included a caveat. I’ll participate if you can assure me that this book will not be used to demonize the killer. That struck me as odd. The idea that the shooter, who shot and murdered two people, should be protected. Then, I started reading about Evan Ramsey, and it suddenly made sense.

Just like guilt, there is also plenty of blame to go around in each of these shootings. Each community has their own theory, and within that community, every person has another. The parents should have seen something, the friends should have taken him more seriously, the bullies should have been caught, the teachers more attentive, the police more diligent, the guidance counselor better trained. But with Bethel, it seemed pretty consistent among those I spoke with that Evan Ramsey was a product of his own life’s worst circumstances.

Ramsey’s early years read like a blueprint for a bad outcome. His father was called the “Rambo of Alaska,” after he went on an armed rampage and was imprisoned when Evan was only five. Evan and his brothers were taken from his alcoholic mother, and placed in foster care. The brothers were split up, and Evan reportedly lived in eleven foster homes, and had been sexually and physically abused in more than one.¹

I wept while reading about Evan. There were signs from the very beginning. Fannie Black writes in her story that in third grade, “he threw a temper tantrum and broke one of the windows in the classroom because he wanted to stay in the reader’s nest and not go back to his desk.” My heart broke for the unloved boy who brought a gun to school. I thought about the unloved boys in my daughter’s school, the one whose parents refused to buy him new shoes, even after we offered to donate a pair, the boy whose homework is never done, the boy who couldn’t read in third grade.

I remembered the unloved boys I went to school with. The one who sat in the very back of the class with unwashed clothes and hair, the one who skipped class and hung out in the back alley smoking cigarettes even in elementary school. The one who dropped out at sixteen to work full time and support himself. As a teenage girl, I spent much of my life trying to love those boys. Now, as a mother, I want to care for them. Clean their clothes, teach them to read, and do their homework with them every night. I want to care for Evan Ramsey. But then there are those he killed, the families he destroyed. I want to care for them, too. Sometimes, it feels like I am drowning in sorrow.

AMYE ARCHER, EDITOR

JANUARY 2019

The following student and staff were shot and killed at
Bethel Regional High School:

Ron Edwards, 50, principal

Josh Palacios, 15, student

IN THE PATH OF GUN VIOLENCE

By Fannie Black

Fannie Black was a junior at the time of the shooting.

I never thought Evan Ramsey would shoot me, still when I saw him holding a rifle pointed at the ceiling, walking toward me in my high school hallway, I was immediately afraid. I was scared I might get injured either in the crossfire or crushed by the mob of fleeing students. I ran for the nearest exit, but it was blocked by students. So, I snuck into the nearest classroom, the art room, with two other students, one of whom was in the same grade as Evan and me. We stood around the teacher’s desk staring at each other in shock. Then, more gunshots. We had no idea what to do.

We stayed there, trapped, terrified, unable to make sense of what was happening for about thirty minutes, before we decided to creep out. Police officers in the hallway directed us to the cafeteria in the District Office. When I got to the cafeteria, I searched for my friends. There were still other students trapped in the building. There was just a lot of confusion.

After Evan Ramsey was apprehended, we were sent home. One of our classmates, Josh Palacios, and Mr. Edwards, our principal, didn’t make it. I didn’t cry when I heard of their passing, because it was just so unbelievable. I don’t think we came back to school the next day, but I know it wasn’t long. We had an assembly to honor Josh and Mr. Edwards, and counseling was offered to those who felt they needed it, but I didn’t take it. Little did I know at seventeen, how much I needed the counseling I’m now getting in my thirties.

In the days and weeks that followed, I wondered why I was so certain Evan would not harm me despite my being in his direct path. I reflected on our shared history, searching for answers. When Evan was brought into my third-grade classroom for the first time, I felt connected to him. It was as if I could sense that he had a rough going in his short life, something that I could definitely identify with. That same year, he threw a temper tantrum and broke one of the windows in the classroom because he wanted to stay in the reader’s nest and not go back to his desk. I remembered wanting to tell the teacher to just let him have his peace.

I often saw him being bullied on his way home from school. He just wanted to go home, and a group of upperclassmen followed him, taunting him, trying to get him to fight. Evan wouldn’t fight. My response was the same as almost anyone else’s, to just stand there and watch silently. I remembered all the times that no one stood up for Evan, all the times that other students poked and prodded until he blew up, all those times I chose to watch and do nothing.

I wondered, if I had stepped in, even just one of those times, would things have turned out differently? I was angry, angry at Evan, angry at teachers, angry at myself, and angry at a system that seemed to have no support whatsoever for a child who experienced things no child should.

After the shooting, information on Evan’s history emerged: his traumatic childhood, the abuses he suffered, and his experiences in the foster care system. This child was angry, as anyone in his shoes would be. He was already being pushed down, and it seemed like the world around him wanted to push him down even further. Maybe this was the reason for my response in the shooting, my inexplicable calm in the path of gunfire. Maybe Evan sensed somehow that I recognized the hurt boy he was inside, and that I would never hurt him.

I’ve spent twenty years watching the world prepare the next generation of students for school shootings. I am glad they’re holding drills and training for students now, because we were so unprepared twenty years ago. Still, it makes me sad to think we still need those kinds of drills today, and that this issue has become more widespread. Schools are better prepared to handle this, but they really shouldn’t need to be since schools are supposed to be one of the safest places for parents to send their children.

I am not anti-guns, but anti–gun violence. I am part of a subsistence living family where hunting rifles are considered a commodity, yet I don’t believe access to firearms should be a right. I believe owning a gun should be a privilege. More guns is not the solution. And arming teachers is absolutely not the answer.

I believe more mental health support could have prevented our shooting. But that care must be provided not just for students like Evan, for teachers as well, and not just in response to a tragedy but well before a tragedy even happens.

The fact that preventing mass school shootings has become a political issue just leaves me shaking my head in bewilderment. People’s lives are forever impacted by events like these, and it has been morphed into a political argument about gun laws.

Seeing young people getting involved and fighting for changes is one positive aspect of this issue, along with all the anti-bullying movements happening across this country. But there is more that needs to be done at the district level regarding gun violence in schools. I personally have not done anything yet, since this was a part of my past I kept buried for as long as I could. And there are hundreds, if not thousands more like me across the country—survivors just beginning to heal, decades later. If we had the support we needed right away, and if we accepted the limited support offered to us, would we be able to speak now? When our voices are most needed? Through therapy, and by slowly opening up to my family and friends about my trauma, I’m finally finding my path to healing, but it is a tough, long path that I would not wish on anyone.