Birthday, Book, and In Loco Parentis

Today, October 6th, is my birthday. Hooray for me and for still hanging out on the green side of the grass.

Last Saturday night we attended the local “Evening With the Authors” event hosted by The Friends of the Lockhart Library.  The event is much anticipated each year and is very well attended. It takes place in a beautiful garden and includes eight or ten published authors who each have their own table and a host or hostess. The folks who attend grab a plate of tasty rations and a glass of Texas-made wine and visit as many of the authors’ tables as they care to, getting copies of their books signed and visiting with the authors.

Nita and I played host to Elizabeth Crook, a fine author who lives in Austin and has written several novels of historical fiction, my favorite being The Promised Lands, a real epic about the Texas Revolution.

Her newest novel is about the lives of several fictitious characters who were wounded or otherwise affected by the mass murder episode in Austin on the University of Texas campus during the summer of 1966.

That was the day a deranged man named Charles Whitman, dragged a footlocker of weapons into the elevator of UT’s Main Building and rode up to the observation deck atop the tall landmark UT Tower. He killed the guard and then proceeded to the open observation area that circles the tower. In the next few hours he shot randomly selected people on sidewalks from his secure sniper’s nest. He killed sixteen innocent people, and wounded thirty-two more. It ended when police finally stormed the observation deck and killed him.

Mrs. Crook’s work is not a retelling of the tragic day, but a novel that probes how being caught up in such insanity affects people long after the event. It’s not a war novel, but it sprung from an act of war-like violence, unimaginable in 1966 in the dog days of summer in a quiet college town in Texas.

Sadly, the past two decades have seen other school tragedies that have eclipsed even Mr. Whitman’s afternoon of horror. Columbine High School, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and many other murders of  students, who never questioned their safety at school, have changed our the culture of our nation’s schools.

 On the upside of this train of thought, Nita and I thoroughly enjoyed listening to and engaging in conversation with such a talented author. On top of that enjoyment, early in the evening, I was delighted and flattered to be asked to take part in next year’s “Evening With the Authors” as a local author.  That offer may have come on October 4th, not the 6th, but it was an unexpected gift that made my weekend.

As to the downside of spending an evening visiting with a writer about the first tragic mass murder on a school campus, I’m reminded for the term, “In loco parentis.”

It’s a Latin legal term that means, “in the place of parents.”  School teachers and school principals perform their daily duties “in loco parentis.” Teachers and principals are legally entrusted with the responsibility to act in the parents’ place in matters that affect the parents’ children.  It’s a core concept of education and normally it means making routine decisions in the daily supervision and care of the precious children who spend half their days at school each year.

I was once a school principal, and it was the most rewarding job of my career in education.  Thinking back, I’m confident that none of us who have served as school principals were ever asked in a job interview, “Which way would you go if some morning an insane killer entered your school and  started shooting your students?” 

Bear in mind principals don’t take classes in how to disarm intruders. Principals do not carry firearms on the job. More middle-aged women are principals than are burly men. Principals are educators, not soldiers or cops.

Nonetheless, in the spirit of “in loco parentis”, if I had been asked, I hope I would have said that I’d instinctively run towards the sounds of the shooting, without hesitation, without second thought, without waiting for police support. 

In such a rare nightmare, it should not matter whether a principal is “prepared,” or accompanied by an armed police officer. What should matter is that the principal, acting “in loco parentis, in the extreme, immediately does what a parent would do when their child is being threatened with by a gun wielding crazy man: Confront the gunman and try to stop him, even if that is confrontation is a suicidal act.

“In loco parentis,” even unto death. That sounds melodramatic, but it is exactly what the principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School did one Friday morning a couple of years ago. That middle-age lady is my hero.  I hope that Dawn Hochsprung, the heroic principal of Sandy Hook Elementary School, will continue to be remembered  and honored all across America.

Because, acting “in loco parentis” in the extreme, she went into harm’s way and died a violent death trying to protect the children who had been entrusted to her care.  Mrs. Hochsprung was a parent, a principal, and in my mind, a citizen-soldier. God Bless Her Memory.