LuAnn MacQueen was a first-year teacher at Lansing Everett High School back in February 1978, working in the math lab.
Becky Dodge, a junior, had just left a typing class down the hall.
Sophomore Mike Poole was exiting his class two floors below.
Moments after the day’s final school bell, Roger Needham, a 15-year-old sophomore, left class and headed for his locker. A pale, slight boy, described as a loner, Needham had been teased throughout the year for wearing a Nazi pin. He didn’t like it.
In the crowded hallway, Needham pulled out a Luger-style .22-caliber pistol and fired, grazing the scalp of a classmate, Kevin Jones, 16. Jones ducked as Needham fired a second time; this time the bullet struck 15-year-old Bill Draher in the jaw. Needham then fired once more at Draher’s head.
As Draher lay fatally shot, the gunman approached a teacher and handed him the pistol, a knife and a box of ammunition, according to a 2001 account on the shooting and its aftermath by the Tampa Bay Times.“Here,” he said, “I give up.”
University of Michigan psychology professor Sandra Graham-Bermann told Bridge that school shootings leave a psychological imprint that can linger for a lifetime, though she said most students eventually adjust.
“We learn to live with the sadness and go forward,” she said.
Graham-Bermann said that for many of the Oxford students, that recovery may not be possible without longer-term support.
“Certainly, (counseling) programs at schools are great. But if time goes by, a month, six weeks later and a person is still experiencing symptoms, not being able to go to work or to school, or unable to sleep, then they are going to need professional help.”
Read the full article at Bridge Michigan.
