But as all the eyewitnesses I spoke with took pains to explain, the sight of John with a hunting rifle was a momentarily bemusing one. Calvin Mattheis/The Knoxville News-Sentinel . Faced with a protracted battleand not wanting to see a young person suffer for something he hadnt intended to doRay and his wife ultimately chose not to pursue civil litigation. Advertisement. Both were busy during all hours of the day. On February 19, 1980, the judge granted the request. Its a skit! Lives were shattered, Smith said. Murchison Middle School Details & Information 3700 North Hills Drive Austin, TX 78731 5 school rating 1,392 students 15:1 ratio. For Rays part, the last he had seen of John was when his friend had disappeared into the back seat of a police car. Laura Grayson at her Austin home in February. Should I do that? Im just a scaredy-cat. Accountability Ratings Good. Without ever consciously coming to this conclusion, most of the Murchison kids presumed that they had suffered two losses on May18, 1978their beloved teacher and their promising classmate. It serves 1240 studentsin 6 - 8 with a student/teacher ratio of 13.8:1.Its teachers have had 9 projects funded on DonorsChoose. Hes a really great brother. Though George did not want the Statesman to publish Garcias storyand, indeed, a few people representing the Christians had paid a visit to theneditor in chief Ray Mariotti to express that very sentimenthis posture was anything but belligerent. | Austin, TX 78727 | P: 512-594-2200 | F: . One of them, Daniel Matthews, has since been recognized as a pioneer in the therapeutic treatment of pathologically violent juveniles. The driver of the Escalade was a well-to-do lawyers son who hailed from Highland Park and who was attending the University of Arkansas. 4 stars . Even for those of us who werent in the classroom, there is a chilling kind of flashback that happens with every school shooting, he wrote me. You ask how I got through? The names engraved on two granite slabs include teachers from Sandy Hook, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Santa Feand, yes, Wilbur Rod Grayson, from Murchison Junior High. As they work through their core issues, it changes the driving forces behind their behavior. That approach began to recede during the nineties, as Texas and other states moved toward cheaper and harsher measures to deal with juvenile violence. Theyd come over the hill and kill everyone around me. And, someone else said, hes got a gun!. And if you publish this story, it will destroy our family.. He headed to a local coffee shop, where hed planned to meet a few classmates before driving to the cemetery, and on the way he heard on NPR that there had been another school shooting in Texas, in the town of Santa Fe, south of Houston. Everything stopped that day as we tried to process it. She warned him that he needed to study hard for the upcoming test. Joshua Blake 1989-1993. Schirpik drove him back to school and led him by his arm into the principals office. What occurred in the next two minutes would be remembered through traumas kaleidoscope. As they caught up, someone inevitably brought up the students at Santa Fe High School. Homes with this school assigned For Sale (65) For Rent (96) NEW - 13 HRS AGO 1.01 ACRES $199,000 Many shared memories of Mr. Grayson, as they still called himhow he had once taken the entire class to New Orleans to see a King Tut exhibit; how he had helped his students launch a magazine called Serendipity Doo-Dah; how he was sharp and interesting and challenged us to think outside our normal convention. Someone posted a forty-year-old newspaper clipping with the headline Gifted Student Shoots Teacher and, beneath it, a photograph of their thirteen-year-old classmate shielding his face from cameras. A few years before the fortieth anniversary, Ray was visiting Austin and jogging around Lady Bird Lake when he thought he saw John. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT Within minutes, I was learning for the first time about the shooting on May 18, 1978. Their son, Ian, was an eighth grader by thencoincidentally, the same age as Rods students when he was killedand she wanted him to know where his dads grave site was, in case he ever wanted to visit. In the ensuing years, I gave little thought to the Austin tragedy. After getting his teaching certificate, he had applied for the Murchison opening. What happened? Come celebrate with the Murchison Middle School Fine Arts Class as we open the doors to the public to share the talents of our students. Murchison Middle School Unclaimed 3700 North Hills Drive, Austin, TX 78731 Contact info Website 5 /10 GreatSchools Rating 22 reviews 1,408 Students Grades 6-8 5 /10 GreatSchools Summary Rating 8/10 Test Scores above average 5/10 Student Progress average 2/10 Equity below average Last updated: Jul 07, 2022 ACADEMICS Student Progress 5/10 There were only two people close enough to hear what I said, John remarked. Yet for the witnesses of the Murchison shooting, their longing for justice has little to do with the length of Johns sentenceand, indeed, many would agree that more juvenile offenders should be treated as John was, rather than the other way around. School shootings were not a concern then. The story, written in unsparingly graphic language, was about robots that prowled the streets and castrated men. The shower lacked hot water and the power outlets in the bathroom were inoperable. George died of lung cancer in 2002, and Jo Anne died in 2015. Murchison Middle School placed in the top 30% of all schools in Texas for overall test scores (math proficiency is top 30%, and reading proficiency is top 20%) for the 2020-21 school year. I will never get over losing Olivia. He was a thirteen-year-old boy again, panicked that he was about to be killed. Murchison Middle. But the images and sensations continued to ricochet inside him as he arrived at the coffee shop. AUSTIN (KXAN) Several weeks of torrential rain brought significant flooding to some Austin Independent School District campuses. But he found plenty of fault with Gods creatures. Weve thought, What happened? High Schools in Austin. Tel: (512) 414-3254. www.murchisonmatadors.org. Ive talked about it with my wife quite a bit. Lives were changed. Then: Where is John, anyway?. Austin, Texas,, Texas, In 1988 the system assigned 206 years in prison to a Montana boy named Kristofer Hans who, as a fourteen-year-old, had murdered a teacher and wounded three others after he received a failing grade. On June 2, 1978, two weeks after the shooting, John sat outside a small courtroom at Gardner Betts while the two psychiatrists testified inside to Judge Cofer that John was acutely depressed and suffered from latent schizophreniathe latter being an inexact, catchall term that would eventually fall out of favor in the psychiatric community. Laura had been a teacher before Rod became one, and she continued that work long after he died. He looked him up in the phone book and left John a voice mail: Hey, I know this is weird, but I would really like to get together and talk. He never heard back. Middle Schools in Austin. The next sound might well have been unsteady applause, since many if not most of the students were still convinced that they had witnessed an exquisitely executed dramatic performance. Its the Story of Shankleville, One of the States Early Freedom Colonies. Shop your Murchison Middle School Matadors Apparel Store for the latest selection of Matadors fan gear! It doesnt take any effort to stand in one spot and go in circles.Write soon,Love, John, Letter to former classmate Elaine Moore, from Timberlawn. Unlike his fatheran employee at Humble Oil who at first had not approved of Rods marriage to a Mexican Americanhe was a free spirit who wrote poetry, smoked marijuana, and had ambitions of becoming a professional actor. Smith was the first one out the door. Jimmy Carters Peanut-and-Egg Taco Made Quite the Impression on San Antonians. He toggled between hedonism and religion, each in zealous doses. His eyes darted around in search of airplanes plummeting from the sky, a jarring hallucination hed experienced before. Ray spent the rest of the evening at the home of a former classmate whod settled in Northwest Hills. Virginia Tech. 3700 N Hills Dr Austin TX 78731. Susie Gerrie Davis remembers his insisting on several revisions for a written assignment, telling her, I think you could do something pretty important with this gift of yours, and thats why Im requiring so much work from you. (Davis has since become the author of several faith-based books.) The shooter was the son of LBJ's former press secretary. Instead of going to trial and serving time, John Christian was sent to a private mental health facility in Dallas, TX. To change this setting: I felt trapped. Ray called his old classmate Susie Gerrie Davis, who happened to be in Colorado on vacation. Ray was among several Murchison alumni who went on to UT. For Mac OS users, there is a system setting that may not allow you to tab onto several types of elements in a web page. In Nathers view, the recognition that so many lives were deeply affected by the shooting was proof that such a story needed to be written. Sitting on a stool, he would begin class with a meditation exercise. Can you believe it? John asked, referring to the shoelaces and belt that the authorities had taken from him for fear that he might attempt suicide. Jacobe Bennett 1990-1994. Laura couldnt help but wonder if she would have gotten a different answer had her last name been Christian. The two boys sat in the cafeteria. If you fill out the first name, last name, or agree to terms fields, you will NOT be added to the newsletter list. You look at the jigsaw puzzle, and there are huge pieces that are not there., Thinking back to that distant morning, Smith began to describe his proximity to his teacher; he had been the nearest student to Grayson when the shooting began. They met up for the first time in years to talk about the grief theyd carried for two decades. I have gotten through in the past by ignoring the events, denying their reality and power. . That summer, he returned to the city of his youth and enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin. Phone (512) 414-3254. Nearly a month passed before Statesman reporter Guillermo Garcia was tipped off that John had moved in with a Dallas family. Butler Butler 2012-2016. The overall square footage is approximately 82,730 sf. The anguish that has plagued the Murchison students presages the kind of long-tail trauma that many of today's witnesses to shootings will be burdened with for the rest of their lives. The school expanded in 1999 to include 14 additional classrooms. Is he . Updated: 10:45 AM CST February 7, 2019. Nothing. He was a friend.. School Address (Store Correction) 3700 N Hills Dr Austin . Official Facebook page of the Murchison Matadors! Rumors swirled around the quiet new student. 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