In 1966 the Methodist church moved my dad to Richmond, IN. It was our 5th move in as many years and we didn't have any reason to think this place would be so very different from all the other church towns we had lived in, but this little midwestern town became one of the important crossroads in my life. Here I made lifelong friendships, was introduced to the Quaker community, social activism, and theater, music and dance. This was a place where we could be wild children in the summer - racing out the door to explore the woods, hunt for fossils, and dare each other to walk the white and black pipelines. We went to public school and suffered through tornado drills (head for the basement!) and atomic bomb drills (Under the desk? Really!?). There was a dress code for girls - no pants allowed except for on the bitterest of winter days where we could wear them under our skirts. There's nothing quite like a midwest winter wind whipping across your face and stinging bare knees, and since we went home for lunch it was a double walk every day.
It was also a time when we were learning to talk about issues around race. I learned so much from my then best friend Sonya Spears, who, on one of those walks home from school, patiently explained the word "prejudice" when I told her I had Mrs Skinner for third grade. Sonya was awesome - a whole year older than me, she was imaginative and worldly and wise in ways I didn't yet understand. I was embarrassed and so terribly confused when our evil landlady Mrs. Runyan wouldn't let Sonya and me play in the front yard. I learned the word "racist" that day. We were fortunate to have awesome friends across the street (that's you Bonnie!) who not only invited us to play in their yard, but put up a swingset for us even though they didn't have kids of their own. Knowing we were playing in full view of the evil Mrs R was the best neener-neener-neener moment of my life. If you think we had some sort of idyllic Hallmark friendship, you should know that Sonya also told me that the dirt in the wading pool was polio and I spent three long days convinced I was going to die. She wasn't perfect, she was a kid!
Two years later Martin Luther King Jr would be assassinated, waking up our country and driving home the things my friend had taught me. Two days after his murder, on April 6, 1968, our little town quite literally exploded when a gas main ruptured under a sporting goods store, setting off a second explosion when it ignited stored gunpowder and ammunition. It was my little brother's birthday and we stood outside in our party hats watching the smoke billow from the center of town wondering if it was the end of the world. 41 people died, and hundreds were injured. The adults ran to town to see if they could help and came home hours later looking grim and sad. They just said it was really, really bad, but I had no idea how bad until years later. The one thing people remember most about that day was how people came together to fight the fires, help the injured, and take care of each other. My friend Sonya's mom was Assistant Head Nurse at Reid Hospital and you can hear her talk about that day in this documentary:
https://youtu.be/_W-4jvlMejM
50 years later and I imagine the town has changed quite a bit, and hopefully for the better. But in other ways, the most fundamental of ways, I hope it hasn't. I hope people still take care of each other, and teach each other, and the kids run wild all summer, thumbing their noses at the Skinners and Runyuns of the world.
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| My grandmother loved seeing her name in the paper, so she submitted stuff like this all the time. |
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| Google satellite view is amazing. The woods we roamed in are still there! |
