\u201cI am 57 years old and I have not begun to get over that day of murder,\u201d says Michael Fechter.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0Fechter, who lives in California now, was a high-school classmate of Carlotta Hartness and Tommy Taylor, young teenagers who were randomly murdered in Columbia back in October 1977.\u00a0 Terrible violence was inflicted upon Carlotta.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wrote last month about those killings, and about the awful and long-lasting grief that affects family members and friends who survive. \u00a0 Michael Fechter \u2013 formerly a comedy writer and touring comedian who worked with Robin Williams, Jerry Seinfeld, Rodney Dangerfield, Tim Allen, Jay Leno, Bill Maher, and Richard Pryor, among others \u2013 was one of dozens of people who responded to that column.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The responses \u2013 both to me personally and to Sherrerd Hartness, Carlotta\u2019s older sister — were numerous and heartfelt.\u00a0 People have not forgotten. The unceasing gun violence that afflicts the United States today, moreover, leaves an ever-spiraling number of survivors like Sherrerd Hartness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In meeting with her, I posed the question:\u00a0 Why, after 42 years of silence, did she decide to speak out about ways to help survivors? \u201cI hope to help people understand a bit of how extremely painful and difficult it is to be a survivor,\u201d Sherrerd said, \u201cand I want to help people learn gentle and helpful ways to be a true support and friend to people like me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSilence is not the answer,\u201d a high school friend wrote after reading the earlier column.\u00a0 \u201cWe did not know what to say after the deaths of Tommy and Carlotta. You are helping us understand how to speak to survivors and how important it is to remember the person and not how they died.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Frank Coker, a cousin in Charlotte, wrote: \u201cLiving through the most difficult parts of life enables us to speak to someone else who is going through the same thing. To let them know they are not alone, to let them hear someone describe the feelings they can\u2019t yet put into words, and to see that it\u2019s possible to make it through.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u00a0Boo Major, the University of South Carolina\u2019s equestrian coach, told Sherrerd: \u201c\u2026It takes someone like you who has really lived all this for so long and is breaking your silence about how to better help folks understand what is and isn\u2019t comforting when such a tragedy strikes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sherrerd\u2019s elder son, Blake Hartness Patterson, wrote: \u201cYou are addressing something that is rarely part of normal discourse in society.\u00a0 Because most people never experience loss like the family of a murder victim does, they don\u2019t know what to think or do if tragedy strikes in their neighborhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMurder victim families are further marginalized and isolated because people in the world aren\u2019t generally equipped to know\u2026how to support, love, and care for murder-victim families.\u00a0 Society should be equipping to help in specialized ways, from a basic knowledge for all people down to specific policies and techniques for law enforcement\/social services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cFinally, building awareness about murder-victim family trauma and recovery is something that everyone can get behind, unlike the polarizing and hyper-partisan gun policy debate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Michael Fechter, the former comedy writer, said: \u201cNot just one person dies in a murder, whole families are destroyed.\u201d\u00a0 Carlotta\u2019s and Tommy\u2019s murders \u201cchanged the arc of my life,\u201d added Fechter, who is now program director of a nonprofit organization in Monterey, California that helps homeless women.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
His classmates\u2019 murders, he said, made him \u201cextraordinarily protective of young women.\u201d The killings also made him \u201cvery afraid.\u201d\u00a0 Remembering the Sandy Hook massacre of 20 young children at their elementary school in 2012, he and his wife don\u2019t plan to send their 2-year-old daughter to a conventional school.\u00a0 \u201cIt\u2019s not a chance I\u2019m ready to take,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for Sherrerd Hartness, she is heartened by the response to the earlier column.\u00a0 \u201cEvery comment has been encouraging and has given me more confidence to speak out,\u201d she says.\u00a0 Accordingly, she has accepted an invitation from the University of South Carolina\u2019s Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice to speak at a class on \u201cAnalyzing Homicide\u201d in Spring 2020.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She has also spoken to Michael Fechter and a few other schoolmates who are researching the best ways to use their talents in order to shine a light on this important subject.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the meantime, she thinks about what Fred Rogers (of \u201cMister Rogers\u2019 Neighborhood\u201d on public TV) once said: \u201cAnything that is human is mentionable, and anything that is mentionable can be manageable.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Post-script<\/strong>:\u00a0 Many readers have asked what happened to the men who killed Carlotta Hartness and Tommy Taylor.\u00a0 Two of the men were executed by the State of South Carolina, the first in 1985, the second in 1986.\u00a0 The third killer, who was a witness for the State, was sentenced to life in prison. He died there in 2003.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cI am 57 years old and I have not begun to get over that day of murder,\u201d says Michael Fechter.\u00a0 \u00a0Fechter, who lives in California now, was a high-school classmate of Carlotta Hartness and Tommy Taylor, young teenagers who were randomly murdered in Columbia back in October 1977.\u00a0 Terrible violence was inflicted upon Carlotta. I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}