It has been 42 years since that October afternoon in 1977 when Carlotta Hartness and her friend Tommy Taylor were shot to death near a baseball park in northeast Columbia. Tommy was 17 years old. Carlotta was just 14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The random, gruesome murders of two innocent teenagers rocked Richland County. \u201cI didn\u2019t just lose Carlotta that day,\u201d says Sherrerd Hartness, Carlotta\u2019s older sister. \u201cI lost my entire family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She lost them, each eventually destroyed in their own way, from unrelenting grief.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The trio of youthful killers was arrested five days later. High on alcohol and drugs, they first shot Tommy, who had been sitting in his car. Then they forced Carlotta to a nearby dirt road, where they raped and then shot her as she begged for her life. (Twelve days earlier, the men had raped and murdered a third innocent. Her name was Betty Swank, a young wife and mother.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Sherrerd Hartness still lives. She is 61 now and a divorced mother of two grown sons. She has a soft Southern accent and a degree from Converse College, and she is an interior designer in Columbia. She is also the only member of her shattered nuclear family left to tell the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMy heart hurts,\u201d she said in a recent interview, \u201cfor all the people like me with different names.\u201d She is referring to the thousands upon thousands of survivors of the unending gun violence in today\u2019s America\u2014 the siblings, parents, spouses, children, and friends of the victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe headlines,\u201d she says, \u201cfocus on the crimes and punishment. Families are left to internally disintegrate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Their lives were never the same. Their father instructed Sherrerd and her brother to never again speak Carlotta\u2019s name. Their mother gardened for eight hours a day. \u201cThe only way my parents could survive was to create this emotional armor. It was like steel doors closing on a bank vault. The anguish was so great.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sherrerd\u2019s own attempt at therapy ended after just one session when the counselor asked her to sign a release form so he could use her family\u2019s tragedy for his master\u2019s thesis. She declined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNothing in your body works the same way anymore,\u201d says Hartness. \u201cYou\u2019re not sure what\u2019s what. Everything is exhausting. How is it possible to still be alive and be that exhausted?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2010, two years before her mother died, Hartness discovered a piece of paper in her parents\u2019 bathroom. The paper contained Carlotta\u2019s full name, her date of birth and death, and the comment, \u201cMurdered.\u201d Next came her brother\u2019s date of birth and death. Finally, there was Sherrerd\u2019s name and date of birth, with the date of death left blank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She nearly screamed out in the pain from that discovery. \u201cThis is what people need to understand,\u201d Hartness says. \u201cYou have all these people out there like us, walking around trying to keep it together.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She fears with every shooting, the fabric of our society frays a little bit more. With that in mind, she is speaking out after so many decades of silence about her little sister\u2019s murder and its terrible aftermath. \u201cWhat happened to my sister was horrific. But I\u2019ve got nothing left to lose. Speaking out is the best way I know to possibly help people facing these same situations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hartness talks about creating a \u201csafe place,\u201d an atmosphere where other families and friends of murder victims could feel free to talk. She wonders if public television would produce a show \u201cwith a panel of the Sherrerd Hartnesses of the world\u201d to help survivors cope and explain appropriate ways of talking to them so they are not re-wounded. Ultimately, she wants people to \u201ccome together and figure out some way to stop the gun violence.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She can\u2019t go back to the person she was before. And she has had 40-plus years of trying to make people around her comfortable \u2014people who don\u2019t know what to say or do about her family\u2019s tragedy. So, now, she says this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDon\u2019t pretend the tragedy never happened. Don\u2019t NOT say something. But if you\u2019re going to say something, ask permission first to speak about the victim. Don\u2019t just \u2018barge in,\u2019 because there are \u2018good days and bad days\u2019 for the survivors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDon\u2019t ever say what happened was \u2018God\u2019s plan.\u2019 Just don\u2019t even go there,\u201d says Hartness, recalling a stranger who showed up at her family\u2019s house after the tragedy and blithely announced that it was \u201call part of God\u2019s plan.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you don\u2019t know what to say, just use these words, \u201cI don\u2019t know what to say.\u201d That might be enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Don\u2019t say: \u201cLet me know if there is anything I can do.\u201d Instead, help in concrete ways, such as getting the person \u201coutside in nature,\u201d accompanying them to the grocery store, helping them empty the dishwasher, helping them make the bed. \u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re in an emotional body cast,\u201d says Hartness. \u201cYou want to help them heal as rapidly as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, dear reader, this is where we are in today\u2019s America. Assume, for the moment, that gun violence will continue. Learn, therefore, what to say and do if gun violence befalls your family or friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, Sherrerd Hartness is an expert on this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It has been 42 years since that October afternoon in 1977 when Carlotta Hartness and her friend Tommy Taylor were shot to death near a baseball park in northeast Columbia. Tommy was 17 years old. Carlotta was just 14. The random, gruesome murders of two innocent teenagers rocked Richland County. \u201cI didn\u2019t just lose Carlotta…<\/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\/87"}],"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=87"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jan-collins.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}