Murder-Suicide and Family Trips West

Aftermath

Three shots
Unheard
Still echo down the decades
Sharper than cannons' roar.
One survived
To bear the scars
His brother wished him dead.
One came home
To piece together shattered lives
And ever know the knife-twist
What had she done so wrong?
Others gathered
New to shock
To marvel that these things
Were REAL.
And though they blessed their luck
And told themselves
"We did not see!"
"We could not know!"
"No one could have stopped it!"
They'd come to know
That they were never safe
However they'd pretend.

It's approaching fifty years since Greg Larsen, nicknamed "Mouse", loaded the family rifle while his mom was at work, shot both his younger brothers, one fatally, then reloaded and turned the rifle on himself in his home in the small town of Park Rapids, Minnesota. He was around 13 at the time.

As much as that incident affected me, there's much that I don't know about it. I can't tell you if his last name was spelled -on or -en. I know one of his brothers was Eric, but not whether he was the one who lived or died. I don't know the exact year or Greg's age, but I was in junior high and he was a year younger, also in junior high. I don't know where the boys are buried or what happened to his mom and brother. And I don't know whether anybody ever really found out why.

With all those holes, there is still much I do know. This was when we were still pretty much in an age of innocence, just coming out of the 50's, before the JFK assassination, when violence meant sound effects on everybody's favorite radio show, "Gunsmoke". I knew Greg because we went to the same Methodist church, back when it was still located just off the Fishhook River and next to the world's best swimming beach, ever. And I also knew Greg because he actually talked to me.

Not too many kids did, back then. I was not one of the popular or cool kids, my neighbor-girlfriend didn't even go to the same school I did since she was Catholic, and I didn't share many of the interests that the other kids took for granted. By third grade, when we moved into town, the cliques and friendships were already established, and they didn't include me. My hair was a mess of unruly curls when straight hair was the rage, and my clothes were either hand-sewn or ten-year-old hand-me-downs. So I welcomed Greg's attentions, even though he also wasn't one of the cool kids, though I'm not sure whether I was aware of that at the time. I did know that the nickname "Mouse" came from his short stature, but it never occurred to me to think anything of it other than that he would grow out of it. I had no idea how much he hated it, and occasionally used it myself. I never knew his parents were divorced and the boys lived with their mother. Partly, it never entered our conversations, and partly this was back when that kind of thing - divorce - just never happened to people. We just talked, occasionally, mostly outside church.

Back then church was one center of our social life, the other being school, especially band. Church meant you saw kids Sundays, Wednesday evenings for choir, and one morning a week during the school year for Tuesday School. For those who participated, the day would start at church for an hour of religious instruction, after which we'd all hike over to the school for our regular classes. It was the only legitimate reason not to attend school.

One Tuesday School session stands out starkly as the only one I really remember. Kids were standing around in tight clusters, asking each approaching kid, "Did you hear?" Nobody knew much, but the news of what Greg had done shocked us as nothing had before. Then not only our regular teacher but the minister himself showed up to usher us inside and talk to us. He confirmed much of what we'd heard and did for us what would now be called grief counseling. This was the first I'd heard of Greg's family situation, or how unhappy he was. Somehow the idea caught on that he was in so much pain that he thought it was an act of mercy to take his brothers with him. I find I want to think that was why he shot them, however misguided that was, and not that it came from any sort of malice.

Our regular teacher was Ladonna Ogden, one of the few adults in town who let it be known that she actually knew I existed. She took me aside in private conversation to ask me questions about our conversations and whether I'd had any hints about what was going on in his head, but I was both naive and completely clueless. I in turn wondered what I might have noticed that might have made a difference, but remained unenlightened. I think I found out during that conversation that she was actually related to Greg. I hadn't known her in relation to any other
people except her husband, son and two daughters. The younger one, Mary, was in my grade. She, Doyle Hubbel, and I were in my estimation the three smartest kids in our class, and one of us was bound to have the highest score on something with the others close behind. It spurred my competitiveness to achieve in school, but never developed into any kind of a rivalry. While I liked Mary well enough, we lived on opposite sides of town and seldom actually connected. The one time we did, she introduced me to her chihuahua Pepper, and we both thought it hilarious when he growled, jumped and snapped at me after she induced me to lightly slap her on the leg.

Just a couple weeks after the tragedy, our family went on one of its two-week mega-vacations to the west coast. They happened twice, one on a southern route including Carlsbad Caverns, Grand Canyon, Knotts Berry Farm and Disneyland, plus a coastal fog so thick that my brother had to get out of the car and walk with one hand on the front bumper to keep my Dad steered just right of the center line until it eased up a bit. The other one went further north, including clamming on a Washington beach (which clams Mom promptly fried to rubber), tuna fishing where I discovered this like-a-fish-in-water girl could be seasick, the daily-increasing pong of a starfish in a plastic bag in the trunk which stubbornly insisted on rotting instead of drying out, and a return through Canada with a spur up to Banff & Jasper, where I somehow decided that Mt. Edith Cavell was the most beautiful mountain in the whole world.

I lump these vacations together here because they are lumped together in my memories, both with each other and with my still being in the shock of mourning. They hold many similar memories. Mom would pack a thermos of coffee whose aroma would fill the car, and sandwiches that always had to include lettuce. Tang had just come out, and she decided to mix that for us kids. It wasn't just practical, with no refrigeration either in the car or the motels we stayed at, but it was cheap. Especially the way she mixed it, at half strength to save money, mixed with whatever nasty stuff came from the local motel bathroom tap with its unique mineral blend. For some reason, vacation time was when she decided to inflict liverwurst on us as well. We didn't have it at home, and its peculiar flavor was not well received. For many years afterward, I knew I was sick with a fever when I could clearly taste those sandwiches in my mouth again.

The other hallmark of those trips was speed. With limited time and thousands of miles to cover, is was usual to put on 600 miles a day, driving dawn to dusk, stopping only for gas and restrooms. We entertained ourselves with number and word games, riddles, and spying different state's license plates. And, of course, we had all the scenery you could waggle your fingers "bye" at while you sped past.

For one of those trips, I also had plenty of time to grieve and ponder, wondering what I could have known, how I might have prevented the shooting, whether I even might have wanted to get that involved in his life if I had known. There were no family discussions, just me with my thoughts while mountains whizzed by. Should I have felt guilty? I didn't think so. I wasn't to be expected to know how to prevent that kind of tragedy. I hadn't actually seen or heard anything that today's standards would call "reportable". Guilt aside, then, did I have some responsibility? Could I do something to prevent a next time? Did the fact that he singled me out to talk to say that there was something terribly wrong with me as well, that something in him recognized something in me, hitherto unsuspected? There were no answers.

Well, except from coming home from each of those and all subsequent trips with eyes hungry for the sight of mountains on the horizon. There is something about mountains that fills and calms me spiritually, and when they are in sight, my eyes are riveted to them, caressing each ridge and fold, recognizing them as home. That trip, with that timing, gave me what I needed: space and time to process what had happened.

I did promise myself never to forget Greg. I also determined to find some way to be there to help the next Greg Larsen I came across. That led to my choosing psychology as my major in college, which carried me through to the point where I discovered that each separate branch of the field was its own zealously guarded fiefdom, each entrenched in the belief that it held all the answers, when really, each was just starting to ask some of the right questions. I think for me the final straw of disillusionment was reading a study that showed psychotherapy was equally effective as having a good friend to talk to.

These days, I try to be a good friend.

And Greg, your touch has made a difference.