by Hartt
As the long arm of the law began to curl around Cokeville, word of the takeover began to spread through the town itself. Some fathers pondered whether to unlock big game rifles from their gun cabinets and drive to the school. Some mothers rushed to the police lines set up around the schoolyard; others stayed away, not sure whether their presence would help or hurt. Radio broadcasters Ken Rand of Kemmerer’s KMER and Robin Spurling of Afton’s KRSV began covering the situation.
High school principal Dale Lamborn had the unpleasant task of notifying students of the intense situation under way. He asked the students to stay away from the hostage scene, even though many had younger brothers and sisters in the building. A number of the high school students were teacher’s aides at the elementary school. High school classmates expressed their feelings to each other and especially to fellow students, such as Danny and Billy Mitchell. Their younger brother, Chad, was a hostage. But so were both of their parents, Jack and Jean.
Teacher’s aide and high school student Cindy Wixom first learned what had happened when her teacher Richard Pieper, a volunteer fireman, was called out of class. Custodian Bob Dayton came in to sit with the students and explained the matter bluntly: “He’s got the kids and he’s got the bomb.” Cindy’s brother Kamron was one of the kids.
Before school dismissed, many of the high school students gathered in the auditorium for a prayer. Dale Lamborn pleaded for divine guidance. Later, students recalled that they and their teachers had been spiritually united as never before. Many wept openly, unashamed to share their deepest feelings of fear and love with classmates and leaders.
“All this and no one even consulted the American Civil Liberties Union,” a sophomore remarked.
“Well, the ACLU can go hang its head,” another student said. “Those are my friends in there, and I want to do everything possible, and I mean everything possible, to get them out alive.”
While the reality of the takeover was being communicated throughout town, in the school building itself, custodian Delbert Rentfro was still trying to figure out what was happening in Room 4. Shortly after Max Excell was on his way to make the first contact with the sheriff’s office, Delbert approached the door of the classroom and looked inside. Doris, who was still at the door, apparently decided that Rentfro should be excluded from the hostage group. It is not known why she did this, though it might have been simply the fact that Rentfro, at six feet three inches and 225 pounds, would have been a one hostage they might not be able to control. “Forget it,” she said, closing him out almost abruptly. He thought her rude but left for the kitchen, where he had some work to do.
David Young took this time to lay some ground rules. Certain teachers were told to stay away from the area around the door, while Janel Dayton was appointed door monitor. She was instructed to allow no one out. The children were not to use the drinking fountain in the room. “If you drink too much, you’ll have to use the bathroom,” Young said. And he didn’t want them in the bathroom either, even though it was accessible directly from Room 4. The man does not know children, Mrs. Dayton thought to herself. Forbidding nervous children from using a bathroom—how will this ever turn out?
Doris tried to give the children some practical advice. “Wet some tissue paper and hold it to your face.” But this, of course, couldn’t work because the children were not allowed to approach the fountain to wet the tissue. Teachers could see that the youngsters were getting confused about what they should and shouldn’t do. They turned to combining their efforts in hopes of finding pragmatic solutions to the growing problem. Some handed out nearby books while others asked permission to gather those from farther shelves. David nodded. He seemed to want the children to behave as much as the teachers did.
Eva Clark was still reacting to the reality of being a hostage. With most of her children hostages as well, and the tensions and needs of the immediate situation taking precedence, she had completely forgotten that four-year-old Kathy was still out in the car, waiting for her mother to return from bringing young Paul into school. Eva almost panicked. She approached Doris immediately, trying to explain the problem. “I’ve got to get out to that car and get my young daughter!” she pleaded.
“You aren’t going anywhere,” Doris replied.
Eva was desperate. “Please let me go out and get my baby. I’ll bring her right in here with me.”
Doris clearly wasn’t willing to trust that Eva would return. ‘“You’ll stay right here,” she repeated with more irritation. She didn’t look to David for confirmation; he seemed to know but be disinterested in the outcome.
Eva tried a new approach. “I’ll stay here,” she agreed. “But can someone else go out and get her?” She suggested Christy or Elizabeth, two of her older children in the room. There was still no positive response. Eva tried one last idea. “How about you getting her then?”
This produced a complete change. Doris immediately said, “Sure, I’ll get her,” even sounding pleased about the errand. She went out without delay and returned quickly with Kathy, who seemed little ruffled considering her somewhat long and lonely wait.
“The lady was nice to me,” she told her mother cheerfully.
Max Excell had returned from his first phone calls and had made his report to David, who accepted what he was told with no display of emotion. Excell was mildly surprised. Before long, David demanded of each teacher a head count of their particular students. He added the figures they gave him so swiftly in his head that the hostages were amazed.
Noting that their students were growing more restless, teachers asked for permission to gather crayons and coloring books and more reading material, anything that might help them keep the children occupied. These requests were granted, with the usual stern warning: “Don’t forget to come back, or you know what will happen to the children.” When the materials were assembled, teachers realized that they had too few books for the smallest children. They had to ask David for permission to go out again. He was silent, merely gesturing approval. But his eyes told them he had marked in his mind how long they were gone.
Second-grade teacher Carol Petersen helped distribute storybooks and then moved near the door to be with some of her students. She suddenly realized David was watching her closely. She didn’t understand why she had caught his attention, but he was definitely studying her. She felt even more exposed when he beckoned her to approach. Perhaps, she thought, she was going to be the first one to die. Why else would he make her stand in front of him? She slowly walked toward him and stopped. But now he was totally ignoring her! She didn’t know what to do. Perhaps he had simply wanted her to move away from the door. Quietly, she found a seat somewhere else.
At one point, David made a statement that referred directly to the situation, but not in words that were easy to interpret. He said, in almost a sympathetic tone, “Children are precious. We don’t want to hurt them. I’ll only shoot the kids with a .22.”
With his ground rules announced, David launched into a formal statement of his beliefs. Sitting on a stool, he began, “I’m the most wanted man in this culture. . . . The government and your teachers are polluting your minds. We’re going to get some money and. . . .” It was difficult even for those sitting closest to him to hear what he said. They did catch a bit more. “I’ve got these papers here I’ve handed to the teachers. They tell you about my philosophy. You will learn later what we have in mind for you.” And that was all.
The adults had hoped to keep him talking and say something that would help them understand how to defuse the situation. But he was silent and sullen again. It was about 1:45 p.m.—from then on, Doris did most of the talking. David seemed at times smug and at other times merely bored. He limited his reactions to raising his wrist slightly but ominously if he didn’t like something he saw.
Shortly after his speech, David pulled the bomb cart about, not sure where he wanted to place it for maximum surveillance in the 30' × 30' room. Finally, he pulled up a child’s desk and leaned on i
t. This seemed to satisfy him. As he settled down and turned his gaze back on the occupants, his look had the tiresome scrutiny of one obliged to duty.
But to the children, it seemed more malevolent. “He looked mean, as if to keep us frightened,” one of the kids said. “And he did.”
2:00 p.m.—Jack Mitchell began to notice how difficult it was to breathe. It was more than stuffy in the crowded room—something smelled like gasoline! Jack took a careful look at the bomb cart and realized that the gasoline jug was leaking, albeit slowly. Even as he realized what the problem was, one of the girls got up with a hand over her mouth and ran for the sink. The fumes were clearly making the children sick. Neither Jack nor the girl dared ask David for permission to go to the bathroom. The children were not only frightened of him; now they were becoming ill. Something had to be done.
Jean Mitchell approached David and asked permission to air out the room by opening the windows and doors. David agreed on the condition that a table barricade be set up across the door nearest the bathroom, which was out of his line of sight as he sat facing the center of the room. The windows were too small to become escape routes—the door was his main concern.
The barricade was set up, allowing easy access into the restroom but not beyond into the hallway. Mrs. Dayton was ordered to sit by the door and prevent any child from going through it. At one point she noticed one small boy eyeing the barricade at close range. When he began to climb through, she had to tell him to come back. She hated having to help David keep this youngster imprisoned (see Appendix IX for a drawing of the room).
Opening the windows and doors had made the atmosphere more bearable, but it had also made Doris nervous about the children going near the glass. She alluded to having accomplices at the hallway doors and made hints that snipers were outside, waiting to shoot anyone who got too close to the windows. The children knew these threats could easily be true.
Teachers noted that some of the children were gathered in groups with their heads bowed. “Let’s have a prayer. Pass it on,” one of Jack Mitchell’s sixth graders said. The twelve-year-olds asked Allyson Cornia to voice a prayer for their group. “Father in Heaven, help us. Please help us if the bomb goes off . . .”
“Do you think our Father in Heaven would let us all die?” one boy asked. “No!” said another positively. If David noticed any of these prayers, he said nothing about them. The man who had written that God exists only in man’s mind seemed little concerned if the hostages prayed for deliverance.
2:15 p.m.—The children seemed to be having troubles again. Some of those who hadn’t shown any fear were now looking shocked and scared. Some moved around aimlessly, looking for something to do and risking becoming a nuisance to David. Some of the children were still reacting creatively, making up mock television scenarios about how they would emerge triumphant. They whispered these to each other when they were far enough away from David. Looking at him only made them frightened again. Several children told Doris that they had headaches. Her solution was simple. “Now listen, children,” she told them. “Just don’t think about it anymore.” That was that.
2:30 p.m.—Jean Mitchell watched the children wriggle with discomfort in the overcrowded room. One child moved a neighbor’s leg that had strayed over his own. The owner put it back. There was a small battle of wills with the children frowning at each other. Jean glanced at the man sitting so quietly by his bomb. He was watching the tiff with complete detachment. Jean wondered what would happen when he stopped being detached.
Then she remembered that the dismissal bells would ring in little over an hour. They would signal the children to go home. At 3:25 p.m., would anyone be able to hold them back? Just by instinct, they would try to run out the door, all at once, and then . . .
Her husband, Jack, was talking to the older kids. Like his wife, he had noticed the little ones were having a difficult time. “No one asked for what is happening to us today,” he told his sixth graders. “You are the oldest students. We need you to be brave. We all feel fear here, but for a while, we must not show it. I’m counting on you. I know you can do it.”
Rocky Moore chimed in, “That’s right, kids,” he whispered. “I know you can do it too.”
The twelve-year-olds thought they were old enough to help. They circulated quietly from one little one to the next, smiling, giving a pat on the back, telling them they would get out of this somehow. Jack and Rocky proudly watched their kids respond to the challenge. It tore Jack up to see them under such stress, no matter how well they were facing it. Suddenly, he felt a surge of energy. He could hold back his feelings no longer. “We’ve got to get the children out of here! We’ll have them out by 4:00 p.m.!”
David’s reaction was immediate. He jerked his hand down to the gun in his belt but then stopped. Jack sat down, horrified at what he had almost set off. Jean, just as terrified, saw the anger slowly drain from David’s face. Her boy Chad, sitting nearby, gave his mother a fierce hug. She felt both agony and relief in his embrace. Why, why did David have to put the children through this?
As Jack thought about what had just happened, he realized with complete clarity that he and the other teachers were powerless. “There is absolutely nothing any mortal can do,” he said to himself. “We are utterly helpless. Even if we stormed the man, he could shoot a child or explode the bomb as he falls down.”
Doris approached Jack, carrying something in her hand. She had found an EMT radio in another room, and now she asked him to show her how to use it. Jack, a licensed ham radio operator, knew how but wasn’t going to help her. He said he didn’t know how to use it. Doris, however, experimented with the dials and managed to find the police channel herself. She was soon listening to every stratagem the authorities were at that moment discussing outside the building. She even heard Patrolman Brad Anderson report to the town hall that he had set up a command post where he could look down the school’s south hallway from a Main Street backyard.
Principal Excell was out on one of his telephone contact runs for David. As soon as he returned, Jack quietly motioned him over. “Tell the police to get off the radio! They’ll have to communicate some other way. These people can hear everything they’re saying outside.”
When Excell went out for his next call, he reported the problem. Within a few minutes, the police channel went dead. The small psychological victory gave the teachers fresh hope.
As Excell was on his way to make that call, Delbert Rentfro was on his way back from the kitchen, still uncertain about the goings-on in Room 4. Now he heard the telephone ringing repeatedly with no one answering. As he came down the hall, he saw Excell hurrying toward his office. “Delbert!” exclaimed the principal. “We’re all being held hostage in Mrs. Mitchell’s room. Get over to the town hall while you can. Tell them to be sure they keep everyone away from the school building! We can’t risk anyone trying to get in.”
The custodian hurried out of the building, found no one barring his way, and ran to the town hall. There, he relayed his boss’s message, giving the lawmen a good description of the Youngs and their location in the school and updating the initial information Princess had given. After giving his report, he suddenly felt strange. He almost wished he was inside that room with the kids. He felt separated and horribly frustrated, not knowing what was happening to them.
Many other people felt as he did. The high school track team, competing at Casper, Wyoming, in a regional meet, was notified of the crisis. “We had no more heart to do anything but finish up quickly and get home,” one athlete said.
“Our brothers and sisters were in that school. I think others did as I did. They prayed; then they prayed again,” another student commented.
The senior civics class was taking a tour of Utah’s Point-of-the-Mountain prison just south of Salt Lake City. One of the students, Andra Birch, remarked that she would “be glad to get back to Cokeville, where I didn’t have to think about problems with crime and criminals.” When she arrived home, she learned
her little brother was one of those being held hostage by a man with an arsenal and a bomb.
2:45 p.m.—Jean quietly flagged her husband’s attention. She reminded him about the dismissal bells—they needed to be switched off soon. Jack approached David and asked for permission to leave. David studied him for a minute but voiced no opposition. He didn’t concern himself now about anyone returning. They knew the result if they didn’t. Jack rushed to Tina’s office and easily located the switch. He was back so quickly it seemed too brief for such a vital task. “It’s done,” he told his wife.
Almost 3:00 p.m.—Teachers and older students watched two of the younger ones quarrel over the “funnest toys.” One grabbed another boy’s construction block. John Miller was keeping his eyes open for any change in the air. Gloria Mower and media aide Gayle Chadwick were both grateful nothing had happened to trigger the bomb yet, but they wondered how much longer the standoff could go on.
Seven-year-old Jay Metcalf didn’t understand what was happening—all this strange talk, the strange man with the strange look and the strange behavior. He felt strange himself. Quiet tears started to roll down his cheeks. Doris handed him a tissue.
Cindy Cowden watched what was going on around her and decided that if she and the children lived, she wanted to work at this school. “I loved these children for their determination to make the best of their circumstances. They wanted to do what their teachers told them. I fell in love with them,” Cindy said. Several children near her again began to pray. She held their hands and prayed with them. They haven’t given up hope, she thought. Neither can I.
Suddenly, Jeremiah Moore remembered it was his birthday. David was asked if they could sing “Happy Birthday.” Surprisingly, not only did David agree, but he and Doris joined in halfheartedly. Because the music seemed to have a settling influence on the children, David allowed other songs to be sung. Kliss Sparks stood up to lead, and for several precious minutes, some of the smaller children almost forgot where they were and why.