She rarely gives much thought to Whitman, who remains, in her mind, remote and inscrutable. “I never saw his face, because we were separated by so much distance,” Claire said. “So it’s always been hard to understand that he did this—that a person did this—to me.” Paging through Life on her library visits all those years ago, she studied the photos of him, and one particular image—taken at the beach when Whitman was two years old—has always stayed with her. In the picture, he is standing barefoot in the sand, grinning sweetly at a small dog. Two of his father’s rifles are positioned upright on either side of him, and Whitman is holding on to them the way a skier grips his poles.
“That’s how I see him—as that little boy on the shore, still open to the world, just wanting his father’s love and approval,” Claire said. She cannot grasp how, in such a short span of time, “he became so twisted and decided to do what he did,” she said. “But I’ve never felt it was personal. How could I? He didn’t know me, I didn’t know him.”
It will have been fifty years since the shooting this summer, an anniversary that, for Claire, has brought the tragedy into clearer focus. A documentary that tells the story of the day of the massacre from the perspective of eyewitnesses and survivors, with an emphasis on Claire’s ordeal, premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin in March; directed by Austin-based filmmaker Keith Maitland, Tower will air nationally on PBS later this year. (The documentary is loosely based on a 2006 Texas Monthly oral history; I served as one of its executive producers.) The film, and recent efforts to plan a memorial for August 1, have reconnected Claire to people she thought she would never see again. “I felt so isolated by the years of silence,” she wrote to Maitland during filming. “Now I feel restored to the community from which I was ripped.”
Last spring, Claire found herself at the Capitol once again to testify against legislation that would allow concealed handguns on college campuses. While the bills she opposed in 2013 had ultimately failed, this time her testimony did little to deter gun-rights advocates, who succeeded in passing a campus carry bill by a two-to-one margin. Though supporters argued that the measure would make universities safer, Claire was heartened when protests erupted at UT, where an overwhelming majority of students, professors, and administrators balked at the legislature’s actions. In what Claire sees as a grotesque insult, the law will go into effect on August 1, half a century to the day that Whitman walked onto the Tower’s observation deck and opened fire.
Like many survivors of the shooting, Claire will return to campus to mark the anniversary. The university, now a sprawling, multibillion-dollar institution whose shiny new research facilities dominate the landscape, is drastically different from the one she entered in 1966, but the unsettled legacy of that summer remains. Though the gaping bullet holes left by Whitman’s rampage were quickly patched over, not every scar was filled, and anyone who takes the time to look closely at the limestone walls and balustrades that line the South Mall can still make out tiny divots where his bullets missed their mark.
Claire longs to lie down in the shadow of the Tower, on the precise spot where she was shot. “It’s beyond me why I would feel comforted there,” she told me. “But I want to lie down, and remember the heat, and remember Tom, and remember the baby.” That wide-open stretch of concrete is the last place they were all together.
Originally published in Texas Monthly, March 2016
Jennifer Pan’s Revenge
By Karen K. Ho
Bich Ha and Huei Hann Pan were classic examples of the Canadian immigrant success story. Hann was raised and educated in Vietnam and moved to Canada as a political refugee in 1979. Bich (pronounced “Bick”) came separately, also a refugee. They married in Toronto and lived in Scarborough. They had two kids, Jennifer in 1986 and Felix three years later, and found jobs at the Aurora-based auto parts manufacturer Magna International, Hann as a tool and die maker and Bich making car parts. They lived frugally. By 2004, Bich and Hann had saved enough to buy a large home with a two-car garage on a quiet residential street in Markham. He drove a Mercedes-Benz and she a Lexus ES 300, and they accumulated $200,000 in the bank.
Their expectation was that Jennifer and Felix would work as hard as they had in establishing their lives in Canada. They’d laid the groundwork, and their kids would need to improve upon it. They enrolled Jennifer in piano classes at age four, and she showed early promise. By elementary school, she’d racked up a trophy case full of awards. They put her in figure skating, and she hoped to compete at the national level, with her sights set on the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver until she tore a ligament in her knee. Some nights during elementary school, Jennifer would come home from skating practice at 10 p.m., do homework until midnight, then head to bed. The pressure was intense. She began cutting herself—little horizontal cuts on her forearms.
As graduation from grade eight loomed, Jennifer expected to be named valedictorian and to collect a handful of medals for her academic achievements. But she received none, and she wasn’t named valedictorian. She was stunned. What was the point in trying if no one acknowledged your efforts? And yet, instead of expressing her devastation, she told anyone who asked that she was perfectly fine—something she called her “happy mask.” A close observer might have noticed that Jennifer seemed off, but I never did. I was a year behind her at Mary Ward Catholic Secondary in north Scarborough. As far as Catholic schools go, it was something of an anomaly: it had the usual high academic standards and strict dress code, mixed with a decidedly bohemian vibe. It was easy to find your tribe. Bright kids and arty misfits hung out together, across subjects, grades, and social groups. If you played three instruments, took advanced classes, competed on the ski team, and starred in the school’s annual International Night—a showcase of various cultures around the world—you were cool. Outsiders were embraced, geekiness celebrated (anime club meetings were constantly packed) and precocious ambition supported (our most famous alumnus, Craig Kielburger, pretty much ran his charity, Free the Children, from the halls of Mary Ward).
It was the perfect community for a student like Jennifer. A social butterfly with an easy, high-pitched laugh, she mixed with guys, girls, Asians, Caucasians, jocks, nerds, people deep into the arts. Outside of school, Jennifer swam and practiced the martial art of wushu.
At five foot seven, she was taller than most of the other Asian girls at the school, and pretty but plain. She rarely wore makeup; she had small, round wire-frame glasses that were neither stylish nor expensive; and she kept her hair straight and unstyled.
Jennifer and I both played the flute, though she was in the senior stage band and I was in junior. We would interact in the band room, had dozens of mutual acquaintances and were friends on Facebook. In conversation, she always seemed focused on the moment—if you had her attention, you had it completely.
I discovered later that Jennifer’s friendly, confident persona was a façade, beneath which she was tormented by feelings of inadequacy, self-doubt, and shame. When she failed to win first place at skating competitions, she tried to hide her devastation from her parents, not wanting to add worry to their disappointment. Her mother, Bich, noticed something was amiss and would comfort her daughter at night, when Hann was asleep, saying, “You know all we want from you is just your best—just do what you can.”
She had been a top student in elementary school, but midway through grade nine, she was averaging 70 percent in all subjects—with the exception of music, where she excelled. Using old report cards, scissors, glue, and a photocopier, she created a new, forged report card with straight As. Since universities didn’t consider marks from grades nine and ten for admission, she told herself it wasn’t a big deal.
Hann was the classic tiger dad, and Bich his reluctant accomplice. They picked Jennifer up from school at the end of the day, monitored her extracurricular activities, and forbade her from attending dances, which Hann considered unproductive. Parties were off-limits and boyfriends verboten until after un
iversity. When Jennifer was permitted to attend a sleepover at a friend’s house, Bich and Hann dropped her off late at night and picked her up early the following morning. By age 22, she had never gone to a club, been drunk, visited a friend’s cottage, or gone on vacation without her family.
Presumably, their overprotectiveness was born of love and concern. To Jennifer and her friends, however, it was tyranny. “They were absolutely controlling,” said one former classmate, who asked not to be named. “They treated her like shit for such a long time.”
The more I learned about Jennifer’s strict upbringing, the more I could relate to her. I grew up with immigrant parents who also came to Canada from Asia (in their case Hong Kong) with almost nothing, and a father who demanded a lot from me. My dad expected me to be at the top of my class, especially in math and science, to always be obedient, and to be exemplary in every other way. He wanted a child who was like a trophy—something he could brag about. I suspected the achievements of his siblings and their children made him feel insecure, and he wanted my accomplishments to match theirs. I felt like a hamster on a wheel, sprinting to meet some sort of expectation, solely determined by him, that was always just out of reach. Hugs were a rarity in my house, and birthday parties and gifts from Santa ceased around age nine. I was talented at math and figure skating, though my father almost never complimented me, even when I excelled. He played down my educational achievements, just like his parents had done with him—the prevailing theory in our culture being that flattery spoils ambition.
JENNIFER MET DANIEL WONG IN GRADE 11. HE WAS A YEAR older, goofy and gregarious, with a big laugh, a wide smile, and a little paunch around his waistline. He played trumpet in the school band and in a marching band outside of school. Their relationship was platonic until a band trip to Europe in 2003. After a performance in a concert hall filled with smokers, Jennifer suffered an asthma attack. She started panicking, was led outside to the tour bus, and almost blacked out. Daniel calmed her down, coaching her breathing. “He pretty much saved my life,” she later said. “It meant everything.” That summer, they started dating.
Of Jennifer’s friends, I knew Daniel best. We met in my grade-nine year at Mary Ward, and he would come over to my house nearly every day after school to watch TV and play Halo on my Xbox. He would often stick around and eat dinner with my family. Dan spoke to my parents in Cantonese, and my dad would regularly buy him Zesty Cheese Doritos—his favorite. When Daniel was in his final year at Mary Ward, we drifted apart, and midway through the year, he transferred to Cardinal Carter Academy, an arts school in North York. He was falling behind at Mary Ward, and, unbeknownst to me, he had been charged with trafficking after cops found half a pound of weed in his car.
Jennifer’s parents assumed their daughter was an A student; in truth, she earned mostly Bs—respectable for most kids but unacceptable in her strict household. So Jennifer continued to doctor her report cards throughout high school. She received early acceptance to Ryerson, but then failed calculus in her final year and wasn’t able to graduate. The university withdrew its offer. Desperate to keep her parents from digging into her high school records, she lied and said she’d be starting at Ryerson in the fall. She said her plan was to do two years of science, then transfer over to U of T’s pharmacology program, which was her father’s hope. Hann was delighted and bought her a laptop. Jennifer collected used biology and physics textbooks and bought school supplies. In September, she pretended to attend frosh week. When it came to tuition, she doctored papers stating she was receiving an OSAP loan and convinced her dad she’d won a $3,000 scholarship.
She would pack up her book bag and take public transit downtown. Her parents assumed she was headed to class. Instead, Jennifer would go to public libraries, where she would research on the Web what she figured were relevant scientific topics and fill her books with copious notes. She’d spend her free time at cafes or visiting Daniel at York University, where he was taking classes. She picked up a few day shifts as a server at East Side Mario’s in Markham, taught piano lessons, and later tended bar at a Boston Pizza, where Daniel worked as a kitchen manager. At home, Hann often asked Jennifer about her studies, but Bich told him not to interfere. “Let her be herself,” she’d say.
In order to keep the charade from unraveling, Jennifer lied to her friends, too. She even amplified her dad’s meddling ways, telling one friend, falsely, that her father had hired a private investigator to follow her.
After Jennifer had pretended to be enrolled at Ryerson for two years, Hann asked her if she was still planning to switch to U of T. She said yes, she’d been accepted into the pharmacology program. Her parents were thrilled. She suggested moving in with her friend Topaz downtown for three nights a week. Bich sympathized with Jennifer’s long commute each day and convinced Hann that it was a good idea.
Jennifer never stayed with Topaz. Monday through Wednesday, she stayed with Daniel and his family at their home in Ajax, a large house on a quiet, tree-lined street. Jennifer lied to Daniel’s parents as well, telling them her parents were okay with the arrangement and brushing off their repeated requests to meet Hann and Bich over dim sum.
After two more years, it was theoretically time to graduate from U of T. Jennifer and Daniel hired someone they found online to create a fake transcript, full of As. When it came to the ceremony, Jennifer told her parents that the extra-large class size meant there weren’t enough seats—graduating students were allowed only one guest each, and she didn’t want one of her parents to feel left out, so she gave her ticket to a friend.
Jennifer developed a mental strategy to deal with her lies. “I tried looking at myself in the third person, and I didn’t like who I saw,” she later said, “but rationalizations in my head said I had to keep going—otherwise I would lose everything that ever meant anything to me.”
Eventually, Jennifer’s fictional academic career began to collapse. While supposedly studying at U of T, she had told her parents about an exciting new development: she was volunteering at the blood-testing lab at SickKids. The gig sometimes required late-night shifts on Fridays and weekends. Perhaps, she suggested, she should spend more of the week at Topaz’s. But Hann noticed something odd: Jennifer had no uniform or key card from SickKids. So the next day, he insisted that they drop her off at the hospital. As soon as the car stopped, she sprinted inside, and Hann instructed Bich to follow her. Realizing she was being tailed by her mom, Jennifer hid in the waiting area of the ER for a few hours until they left. Early the next morning, they called Topaz, who groggily told the truth: Jennifer wasn’t there. When Jennifer finally came home, Hann confronted her. She confessed that she didn’t volunteer at SickKids, had never been in U of T’s pharmacology program and had indeed been staying at Daniel’s—though she neglected to tell them that she’d never graduated high school and that her time at Ryerson was also complete fiction.
Bich wept. Hann was apoplectic. He told Jennifer to get out and never come back, but Bich convinced him to let their daughter stay. They took away her cell phone and laptop for two weeks, after which she was only permitted to use them in her parents’ presence and had to endure surprise checks of her messages. They forbade her from seeing Daniel. They ordered her to quit all of her jobs except for teaching piano and began tracking the odometer on the car.
Jennifer was madly in love with Daniel, and lonely, too. For two weeks, she was housebound, her mother by her side nearly constantly—though Bich told Jennifer where her dad had hidden her phone, so she could periodically check her messages. In February 2009, she wrote on her Facebook page: “Living in my house is like living under house arrest.” She also posted a note: “No one person knows everything about me, and no two people put together knows everything about me . . . I like being a mystery.” Over the spring and summer, she snuck calls with Daniel on her cell phone at night, whispering in the dark.
Eventually, she was allowed some measure of freedom, and she enrolled in a calculus course to get her final high
school credit. Still, in defiance of her parents’ orders, she visited Daniel in between piano lessons. One night, she arranged her blankets to look like she was asleep, then snuck out to Daniel’s house. But she forgot that she had her mother’s wallet. In the morning, Bich went into the room to get it and discovered Jennifer was gone. Bich and Hann ordered Jennifer to come home immediately. They demanded that she apply to college—she could still be a pharmacy lab technician or nurse—and told her that she had to cut off all contact with Daniel.
Jennifer resisted, but Daniel had grown weary of their secret romance. She was 24 and still sneaking around, terrified of her parents’ tirades but not willing to leave home. He told her to figure out her life, and he broke off their relationship. Jennifer was heartbroken. Shortly thereafter, she learned that Daniel was seeing a girl named Christine. In an attempt to win back his attention and discredit Christine, she concocted a bizarre tale. She told him a man had knocked on her door and flashed what looked like a police badge. When she opened the door, a group of men rushed in, overpowered her, and gang-raped her in the foyer of her house. Then a few days later, she said, she received a bullet in an envelope in her mailbox. Both instances, she alleged, were warnings from Christine to leave Daniel alone.
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