by Hartt
Some of the children said they felt something strange happening in the room. One described a brighter light, “orange-y or golden,” while others thought it was a presence. One of the women held captive said she felt “sure we were going to die . . . and then shortly after realized I was planning what to fix for dinner!” Could this change in mood have been a reason why David Young sought refuge, even if temporarily, in the restroom?
Perhaps one key to solving this puzzle is the knowledge that David consistently acted for his own best interests, regardless of the outcome for others. A relative, speaking about David’s refusal to end his exploitation of his daughters, said of the dead kidnapper, “He just did anything he wanted and thought he could get away with it. Too often, he did!”
The diaries reveal that David simply didn’t perceive the will or choice of anyone else to be as valid as his own. Investigator Ron Hartley determined, after months of intense scrutiny of the writings, that he not only didn’t but also couldn’t consider other people’s needs and feelings. Life and death had lost the shapes and relationships they have for most people on the planet.
Earl Carroll reiterated what other investigators had said about Young’s intentions. “It doesn’t appear from all the evidence that David Young ever planned on walking from the school building alive.”
By an early age, his intellect and ego were little tempered by any overt compassion for others. With few social contacts, there was not much opportunity to determine how far out of line he might have been with the rest of the world. He was dangerous because of a fanatical compulsion to prove that he was always right. Young’s mind seems to have taken him into more than a mere wrestling match with logic. Life may have become more and more bitter, as he faced the ugly realization that his profound conclusions had not brought him any meaningful satisfaction. After all his years of pondering, where indeed was his reward?
Chapter Eight
Love Pours In
“Our freedom was intact, our children were alive. Pain would pass, burns would heal. God does hear and answer prayers.”
—Sherrie Cornia, mother of three hostages
While David Young’s attack was against the children, he had targeted the whole community, and the fact that everyone survived was worth celebrating. The townspeople of Cokeville had every reason to feel jubilant. Even though the crisis had lasted less than three hours, every hostage was in grave jeopardy while it lasted. Five minutes of genuine danger can be frightening enough. Three hours must have seemed an eternity of fear and frustration to the captives inside, who were helpless to break free, and to their families outside who were helpless to aid them.
Had most or all of the hostages died, it is not impossible to imagine the town dying with them. It would have been too painful to stay in a place that only reminded survivors of how much they had lost. Townsfolk exulted, therefore, when they fully understood how marvelous the escape from the school had been: 150-odd children and adults trapped in a single room as a bomb designed for maximum destruction went off inside it. By surviving their ordeal, the victims of David Young had turned their town into a symbol of something extraordinarily powerful; not the explosive force of the bomb itself but the transcending force of the love that unified the hostages and gave them the courage and wit to outlast their attackers.
Sharing the wonder and jubilation felt by the community, people from surrounding towns and from all over the world poured out their feelings in letters, cards, posters, banners, phone calls, and personal visits. The support shown the hostages came in a flood of incredible intensity. Extended family members kept Cokeville’s phone lines hot with messages of hope and concern. Encouragement came from old friends, stunned by news that struck so close to home. People from all over felt compassion and empathy and took the time to express it.
One letter included a warm and sensitive poem about courage and a reminder that “what we make of ourselves with the time given in this life is what matters most.” The letter was permeated with love. Its author was a youngster dying of leukemia.
Numerous letters included money, donated to help alleviate the mounting medical costs of those injured in the flames. A fund was set up for “The Cokeville Kids.” From coast to coast, messages and donations swamped the little post office—over $16,000 was collected in the first few days. The money that flowed in was enough to cover hospital and doctor expenses for every child injured. These gifts from well-wishing strangers were especially appreciated, because some of the most serious injuries involved children from families who were out of work or struggling.
A Lutheran minister sent heartfelt wishes from his congregation: “We will be praying for all of you in church Sunday. God bless, as you now attempt to recover and to put yesterday in the past. Have a good day and a better tomorrow.”
The pastor of St. Margaret Mary Church in Algonquin, Illinois, shared a poignant message from his parishioners: “Our parish community has witnessed the power of prayer . . . part of our parish were members of the pilgrimage group hijacked on TWA’s flight 847 last June. Therefore, we are very understanding of what you have just gone through.”
Some months after the bombing, a fifteen-foot-long banner arrived from a Latter-day Saint Primary in Bakersfield, California. Covered with hearts and the words “Our hearts reach out to you,” it bore photos of dozens of children aged three to twelve. Messages with the photos indeed warmed the hearts of their readers: “I’m nine years old. I am glad you are safe.” From other nine-year-olds: “Glad you are all rite,” and “My name is Mike. I am glad you guys didn’t die.” An eleven-year-old drew a hand-held bomb: “I hope you are OK. You are lucky the bomb didn’t work. P.S. Come to Bakersfield. You’ll like it.” Another invitation was even more compelling: “Please come to Bakersfield and see my skateboard.” Teachers of the organization wrote, “Our Primary loves you all! Best wishes to you!”
A man in California, who preferred to remain anonymous, sent each of the worst burn victims a Cabbage Patch doll, not purchased from the store, but donated from his own private, highly treasured collection. He said he wanted to help the Cokeville kids cope. Such expressions as these without doubt helped the victims heal. They saw tangible evidence pour in which proved that, even if there were demented strangers out there who might bring them harm, there were also many, many more caring, genuinely concerned and loving strangers who would sacrifice personal time and means to bring them joy. This outpouring of love set the town on the first steps to recovery.
Before the hostages and their families could put the anger of the takeover behind them, however, they would have to go through a period of difficult coping. Everyone was pretty much in agreement by now that something extremely unusual—something that had all the characteristics of genuine divine intervention—had taken place. That protection had accomplished its task and was now, perhaps, withdrawn. Responsibility for coming all the way out from under the shadow of David Young was now in the hands of the victims and townsfolk themselves.
Effects of the ordeal didn’t take long to manifest themselves. Psychologists familiar with hostage trauma know that, as bad as physical injuries can be, the accompanying emotional injuries can be much more destructive and long lasting. While similar in many respects, there would also be some important differences between the emotional trauma that the victims suffered and the trauma their friends and families went through, waiting for the crisis to end.
In our own home, we began to deal with the aftermath of the psychological damage—and we began to work on healing. Kam, huddled in a quilt in our living room, had just answered extensive questions from reporters, including some from Salt Lake City’s Deseret News. The reporters wrote, “In a trailer home about 6½ miles from Cokeville, Wyoming, Kamron Wixom sits on a couch, cross-legged, with a patchwork quilt draped around his shoulders. He just finished talking long distance to a reporter from New York—not an everyday experience for the 12 year-old sixth grader. But neither is a bombing of a school room a common experience
in this sleepy town of 550 people.”
“I felt kinda mad. Now I feel shaky,” Kamron told the reporters.
“Will you be scared to return to school next week?” reporters asked Kam.
“Not really,” he said, “ ’cause I know they’re both dead.”
But by now, it became apparent to family members that Kamron was beginning to feel the “shakiness” he had earlier mentioned.
We began the difficult process of making sure our family members knew all was well. Our oldest daughter, Wendi, had not seen her brother Kamron in two years. Unable to reach us by telephone due to jammed phone lines, she waited hours for any word. That evening, a neighbor boy brought a newspaper to her home.
“Is this your mom and little brother?” he asked Wendi, knowing she was from Cokeville. Wendi grabbed the boy and the newspaper in one big, excited swoop and gave both of them a hug.
She recognized the jacket her mother was wearing. “It was your camp jacket,” she explained later. “I looked at that picture and thought how that jacket would smell of campfire, and all the fun times we’ve had on our outings came flooding back. The photo came alive to me,” she said, “and helped me feel a part of the family circle. I needed to be in contact with my family during this crisis.”
That night, her newspaper ran the same photo again with the headline, “Photo eases worry for Safford woman.”
“It was the first time I could visualize that my family was fine,” she told the paper.
In the meantime, hearing reports on our car radio about “a bomb exploding in a school classroom in Cokeville, Wyoming,” we worried about what other friends and relatives might think. It would be very easy to imagine the worst.
Judene’s mother, Gladys, was somewhere in New York on vacation, and our daughter Julie was in Virginia. Two other children, Peggy and Wade, were working for the season as guides on the Colorado River, away from telephones for a week or more. They needed to be informed. Getting through to them seemed impossible. Phone calls were now coming in from other family members. One sister reported what she had seen on television. “Bomb kills two, injures 75 in Cokeville, Wyoming elementary school explosion . . . details later.” Another sister, Julie, with extensive medical training in the Navy, heard reporters say something about the hostages having “black on their bodies like hot oil.” She was horrified. “I knew the painful and destructive power of such a thing,” she said, and she was gratified to learn the full story, which did not include anything about “hot oil.”
We learned later that Judene’s mother had been watching television at the home of friends in Poughkeepsie, New York. Someone called her attention to the Cokeville story, and she watched incredulously for more details. “I couldn’t quite grasp the reality of it all,” she later said. She tried unsuccessfully for two hours to call. It wasn’t until the morning newspaper the next day had that photo of daughter and grandson embracing that she was reassured her family members were safe.
A Cokeville native, Barbara Perry, was driving through Donner Pass with her husband and caught news of what had happened in her hometown. The broadcast out of California said two people in Cokeville had been killed after teachers and children were taken hostage. Her husband described her as “frantic.” She had relatives who were teachers and feared they might be the two who were dead. It was thirty-six hours before they were finally able to hear the whole story.
Every story added impact of what was unfolding before us. How far-reaching would it be? It brought to mind something Doris Young had told the children. “Think of this as an adventure—something to tell your grandchildren about.” It was not quite what Mrs. Young had in mind, but if adventure can be defined as “a hazardous risk or remarkable experience,” at least she was right about that part before she died.
Many families would deal with the trauma in different ways. Some would take the same attitude they did when the January temperature dipped to 50°F below, or when they were kicked by a cow: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” But there was something different here, not only because it struck close to home, but also because it was more than physical adversity. There was much emotional sorting out to do. Not just for the hostages’ personal feelings about themselves, but for others too.
None of the hostage children had ever encountered so many new challenges in a single afternoon. This was not like something they could turn off like TV. The matter focused on the youngster’s faith in himself and mankind. Trust and ability to love responsibly was, in essence, the future ladder to inner-personal growth.
How would parents respond to help their children? Tougher, or more lenient? With discipline? Just love? It would be a learning experience for everyone.
Several parents with children who had been held hostage quickly saw that trying to force the memory away didn’t solve their children’s problems. Here was a matter to be more than reacted to—it had to be understood. For example, a child writing “crazy” and “insane” over a photograph of David Young’s face might be a prosecuting attorney’s nightmare, but it seemed excellent therapy to parents. When Kamron did just that, the entire family understood the full meaning behind the picture with the scribbled words on it.
Just before bedtime was not a good time for former hostages to be watching television. Terror, hostages, bombs, buildings exploding, guns in Iran or Nicaragua or elsewhere, brought former horror back to mind. Even some teachers held hostage had to leave lights on at night.
Teacher Janel Dayton said, “During the actual crisis, we had to be careful not to sympathize too much, or the children would take a clue from us that it was worse than they thought it was; but we gave a measure of sympathy, yes.”
***
The most common problem faced by hostage victims is an overwhelming sense of fear and vulnerability. Tina Cook, first to be confronted by David Young and first to be taken hostage, found returning to her school duties difficult. One day a man stepped up to the receptionist’s desk and seemed to be stalling. She panicked. Finally, he asked for Mr. Excell—he was just there to check out the playground equipment.
On another day, while Tina was speaking with a visitor, the woman fished around in her purse. Tina immediately imagined a gun. When the woman found what she wanted, it was a business card; she was a sales representative on call. In addition to incidents like these, Tina had recurring nightmares of David Young walking up and thumping on the counter. “Here I am, Mrs. Cook,” he would say, “and you didn’t think I’d come back, did you?” It took her months to get the man’s arrogant superiority and the fear she felt that day out of her mind.
One of the custodians for the school, whose child had been a hostage, told Principal Excell she could not work in the building anymore after dark. The principal himself said it gave him “an eerie feeling” to turn a key in the school door when he came there alone several days after the takeover “with the memories so fresh in [his] mind.”
Memorial Day, ten days after the incident, resulted in nervous moments for some of the hostage boys but at the same time allowed them to move past their fears. The local Boy Scouts were asked to assist the American Legion post in commemorating the community dead. The boys felt very lucky not to be among those honored that year. At the appropriate moment in the ceremonies came a twenty-one-gun salute. It sounded “a little too close” to the young assistants. “I jumped when the guns blew off near me,” one boy said. “But we made it. I think we’re going to be okay.”
One kindergartner would have a much harder time recovering. Her personality changed after the takeover—not even her own family members could find the old enthusiasm in her. “The burns had healed. The rest hadn’t,” her mother said. Outgoing no longer, the little girl shut herself into a shell, hiding anytime she saw a man with a beard. When her father talked to a bearded man at their front door one day, she ran for a back bedroom. Hearing a firecracker at a family party, she disappeared and couldn’t be found. After a long search, family members found her cowering
in the barn.
Townspeople were counseled that every person would move at his own pace and that traumatic events had anniversaries: “A year from now, for example, people will probably show increased anxiety.”
Along with fear and anxiety, anger is recognized as an equally prevalent and genuine response to being victimized. At a town meeting held the Monday after the takeover, one citizen who had not been a hostage tried to apply some Christian charity by saying that perhaps the hostage-takers “didn’t really want to hurt you.”
The response was immediate, almost harsh: “How can anyone say they didn’t mean to hurt us? They hauled all that crap in to kill people!”
A five-year-old had watched his father carry the body of a woman from the smoking classroom, taking “good care” of her. Then the boy realized the woman was the one who had tried to kill them. What did that say about his father? Another child named his emotion: he was “awfully, awfully mad.”
In addition, there were the memories of terror and revulsion. Some children had crawled across a body and had attempted to help her, only to discover it was the woman who had threatened them. Such memories are not easily forgotten.
Problems would show up for months, even years—lives of the hostage families were not yet their own. Fathers and mothers, in search of security, found themselves putting down tougher rules. Mothers would jump at the falling of a pencil; fathers would berate them for being so touchy. Mothers got after fathers for being insensitive. Even weeks after the crisis, a mother said she cried at nothing. Confessed another, “I snap at every little thing.” Such behavior, even when recognized, left the victims feeling guilty, further lowering their self-esteem.
Emotional trauma was especially hard to overcome when it involved a loss of trust. Teachers who had been taken captive struggled with this as much as the children did. Janel Dayton reported that yearbook photographers had nearly given her a heart attack by taking an impromptu flash picture of her working in her room. One day the grandmother of one of her students arrived unannounced to fetch her grandchild. “I’d never seen her before,” Janel Dayton said. “She could have done that in the past and it wouldn’t have mattered, but things were different now.”