Rethinking tragedies

by Darryl Wilkinson

The shooting of Officer Diab at Winston last Friday is such a tragedy. We must keep this young mother, a student at NCMC and mother to a 4-year-old daughter in prayers.

Incidents such as these electrify the community and offer a glimpse of how neighbors connect in our world today. Some first learned of the shooting through a bank’s telecaster. Many more spread the word using social media, like Facebook. Variations on the details multiplied; in this digital world, gossip formerly shared between neighbors over a backyard fence is essentially the same … but proliferates as if on steroids.

If a newspaper such as this has any place left to serve, it continues as a journal while providing context and depth if for nothing more than archive. And even that role is challenging. Liability issues (Why wasn’t the car equipped with a safety cage? How did the prisoner get free?) and privacy issues (Who were the heroic bystanders?) are hurdles to resolve. No one wants to talk “on the record.”

My, how times have changed.

Among the most heinous crimes I’ve covered during the 40+ years behind the keyboard here occurred on Jan. 6, 1982. Hal Page shot and killed Mary Bergman, 41, and wounded two of her nine children, Carl, 12, and Kevin, 16. Page also killed a local electrician who happened to be working there at the time, Ed Ramsbottom. Page finally turned the gun on himself.

This double-murder suicide pushed Gallatin briefly into the national news cycle. At the time most folks locally were bewildered as if tragedy such as this could only occur elsewhere. Perhaps those feelings were logical since the Bergmans had moved to Gallatin only about six months before the murders. But the “wrong place at the wrong time” death of Ed Ramsbottom was keenly felt.

Covering that breaking news story was before our digital age. I happened to be walking along the sidewalk in front of the old Woodruff Ice Cream building when my friend, who happened to be a state trooper, wheeled his patrol car abruptly into the parking space right before me. He stuck his head out the window to yell, “Go get your camera… I’ll wait here for you – hurry!” Which I did.

While en route to the Bergman farm north of Gallatin the dispatch radio stuttered out details of the shootings as facts became known. We were among the earliest to arrive on the scene. In the bottom below the farmhouse, there was a pickup parked beside the roadway. I was so excited I gave it no thought. But the training of my trooper friend kicked in, and we approached the pickup cautiously since there appeared to be someone sitting behind the wheel.

I don’t remember exactly each step by step. But I still see that piece of something steaming in the cold, setting atop the pickup’s hood. Yes, Page committed suicide by shooting himself. That piece of something was a part of his skull.

There are other gory details I’ll spare you from reading. But probably because I arrived on the scene and appeared with a state trooper, those in authority soon designated me as the evidence photographer.

I later learned that law enforcement actually preferred my black-and-white film rather than color prints since some court judges wouldn’t allow the “bloody red” to emotionally influence jurors. This I understand. Late that tragic night and into the morning hours, I admit to getting a bit spooked developing those scenes while alone in the darkroom.

My point in recounting this is how much times have changed. No digital cameras existed. When the Highway Patrol officially designated (and later paid) me, they controlled all images including those I wanted to publish in my own newspaper. Of course, the daily newspapers, especially at St. Joseph and Kansas City, scooped the story before this little weekly’s account was published. But the depth in details, by comparison, was startling – even prompting one judge in an ensuing newswriter contest to quip that he’d never thought he’d ever say a news story might have too many facts.

What trooper today would pull over and wait on any civilian to accompany him in response to an emergency? In today’s digital world, how many smart phone photos and Facebook posts (emphasis: get it first) wait for facts to be verified (emphasis: get it right) before going public?

I suppose all this comes to mind from an unrelated conversation shared with one our new hires now working here on staff. Although a lifetime native, the Bergman affair occurred before she was born and thus she was totally unaware, ignorant really, that anything like this could ever happen in a small town like ours.

Which is precisely my point. Perhaps a real tragedy in our digital existence is how easily context can be erased, fragmented to obscurity, or otherwise lost. Immediacy has its place. But so does meaningful context, and often especially so.