I want to share a short story about my friend Crystal, her husband, Greg, and a day in their lives that shifted the world on its axis.
If you want the full version, listen to a recent episode of the podcast I co-host with my friend Will. Depending on your commute, it won’t take that long.
But here’s a shortened, written version.
I met Crystal in elementary school. We were the kind of friends who took care of each other. I went to her house to watch “General Hospital” because my parents didn’t allow a television in our house. When I went out with a guy who abandoned me to get drunk and “hang with” another girl in a hotel room, Crystal gave me an empathetic ride home. When our relay team didn’t qualify for the state track meet, we climbed to the very top of the bleachers at the track stadium, the heat of the day dissipating in the dark, and smashed our Gatorade bottles to the concrete below, shouting our disappointment at the top of our lungs. I’ve been friends with her as long as I’ve known what “friendship” means.
Crystal and Greg met in college. They live with their three kids in West Liberty, Ohio, where Greg serves as the principal of the rural K-12 building and Crystal is a teacher.
Early on a Friday in January of 2017, Greg was beginning a routine day when the call came into the office: Active shooter.
He didn’t understand. He didn’t believe it. His school? His small, humble, gracious, rural school? A shooter?
Yes. At his school. Within the walls that held his wife, his children, and their entire close-knit community of students and teachers.
He and his assistant raced toward the reported location, a boys’ restroom. All they knew was the shooter had a shotgun— and he’d already used it.
They would soon learn that the shooter was a student-athlete in their school. His name was Ely.
Another student, Logan, had ducked into the restroom to check his hair—unaware that Ely was inside assembling his ammunition. Caught by surprise, Ely fired twice, aiming right at Logan. Down but coherent, Logan began talking.
“You haven’t killed anyone, Ely” he managed to say. “You can stop now.”
He was trying to talk Ely—his friend, his classmate—out of executing his plan.
The plan was big, and bad, and terrible. The plan included a backpack full of bullets.
Hands up, with no idea what they would find, without time to let fear overtake them, Greg and his assistant entered the restroom.
Can you even imagine? They went into a restroom, knowing there was a student with a gun, knowing he had used it.
The assistant principal—also the wrestling coach—spoke. Recognizing the voice of his coach, Ely, who’d locked himself in a restroom stall, put his gun down. 'I’m sorry, Coach,' he said, scooting the gun away from him, under the stall’s wall, toward the assistant principal.
As the sheriff, the highway patrol, the ambulances, and the fire trucks raced to the school, hundreds of students were scattered across the cold, wet cornfields near West Liberty High School.
The questions garnered from this story are vast. Why would a student shoot his friend? What role did mental illness play? What about the medications he’d been prescribed? How did Greg, principal and father, locate his own children in the chaos? And how did a community, shattered by a shotgun, shards of lead embedded into a young man’s body, begin the agonizing journey toward forgiveness?
Beyond Logan, no one else was physically harmed. Except, of course, they were—inside their bodies, where the promise of safety is supposed to live.
This isn’t supposed to happen. Not at all, ever. And certainly not in tight-knit community schools, with students like Ely and Logan. And not— of course not!— to my friend Crystal and her family.
The remainder of this story—of the shooter’s sentencing, Logan’s recovery journey, how Greg and Crystal led their community through their shock and anger, how Greg helped his family heal, and how he finally realized he needed to help himself, too—can be heard in the podcast. It’s an account of fear, forgiveness, and accepting help.
Regardless if you listen for more, the point of this entire story is this:
We never know.
In this work, every day is a potential pivot point where routine can become crisis, and leadership is all we have to rely on.
Every day prepares us, and our people, for moments we can’t yet even fathom.
Every day is an investment in the humans around us.
While we can’t predict when our world might shift on its axis, we can choose how we show up for our people today. With that perspective in mind, I’m looking forward to a meaningful year ahead. Let’s go forth into January with our hope on fire.
Staying curious,
Jen
@nassp @thenaesp @william_d_parker @oaesa @oassacheeranddance @columbusdispatch @urbana_ohio @theohiostateuniversity
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pmp478-from-classroom-to-crisis-and-beyond-with-dr/id1070576885?i=1000740556799
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yU0L4Ij-pIk