There are anniversaries we don't so much observe as dread. The events connected to them are something we'd prefer to forget, days we still cannot accept or fully understand. In this archived story, we chronicle the 30th anniversary of the mass shooting of children at a school yard in San Diego.
ALEX COHEN, host:
As we just heard, familial homicides like this week's horrific killings in Wilmington, California, are pretty rare - rare enough that people find them shocking. Not so rare these days: mass shootings at schools like Columbine High and Virginia Tech. One of the first school shootings happened here in California, at an elementary school in San Diego. That was 30 years ago today. Four years ago, Mike Pesca reported on that incident. Today, we air that story again.
MIKE PESCA: By San Diego standards, January 29th, 1979, was a dreary Monday morning. The day was just beginning at Grover Cleveland Elementary School when across the street, 16-year-old Brenda Spencer looked out her front window. She loaded the rifle she had been given as a Christmas present and then began firing. Soon, nine children lay wounded. The principal and school janitor were dead. Reporter Steven Weegan(ph), from his desk at the San Diego Tribune, began to call the homes near the school seeking out an eyewitness. His first call was to the house closest to Grover Cleveland Elementary.
Mr. STEVEN WEEGAN (Reporter, Chicago Tribune): So, when I called, a girl answered the phone, and I told her who I was, and I said can you see anything from where you are? And she said, yeah, it's all, and she said it's - there's people running around and there's a couple of people shot. And I said, can you see where the shooting's coming from? And she gave me the address. And I said, well, isn't that the address I just called. And she said, yeah, who do you think's doing the shooting?
PESCA: Weegan began asking the girl questions, tell me about yourself. The rifle was a 22, she lived with her dad, she was bored. As they talked, he got worried that yes, this girl's house was where the shooting was coming from. Weegan asked the obvious question.
Mr. WEEGAN: I asked her why she was doing it, and she said because I just don't like Mondays. Do you like Mondays? You know, it just livens up the day.
PESCA: Spencer was soon arrested. Across the country, in a radio station in Atlanta, Georgia, the lead singer of the Irish punk band The Boomtown Rats watched the story come across the wires.
(Soundbite of song "I Don't Like Mondays")
Mr. BOB GELDOF: (Singing) The telex machine is kept so clean And it types to a waiting world
PESCA: What jumped off the wires to the singer Bob Geldof was the four-word reason. Geldof went back to his hotel and quickly wrote a song titled "I Don't Like Mondays." That meaningless explanation somehow fit in with the neolism of punk, and along with a great chorus took the tune to number one in the U.K.
(Soundbite of song "I Don't Like Mondays")
Mr. GELDOF: (Singing) And daddy doesn't understand it He always said she was good as gold And he can see no reasons 'cause there are no reasons What reason do you need to be shown? Tell me why? I don't like Mondays Tell me why? I don't like Mondays
Mr. DAVE COHEN (Spokesman, San Diego Police Department): A lot of people here in San Diego were just aghast.
PESCA: Dave Cohen was a reporter for KFMB Channel Eight.
Mr. COHEN: It seemed to add a little bit to the tragedy that someone was going to make some money.
PESCA: In retrospect, maybe "I Don't Like Mondays" is not so much cruel as it is unaware. At the time, the inadequacy of the reason became totemic. There was no explanation for this one-time, freakish occurrence. Dave Cohen, who's now the spokesman for the San Diego Police Department, thinks that it's hard to ask for a reason when the answer seems tied up in insanity.
Mr. COHEN: I suspect there's something locked deep in her mind, and she might be able to articulate some of it, and some of it she may not be able to.
(Soundbite of song "I Don't Like Mondays")
Mr. GELDOF: (Singing) And he can see no reasons 'Cause there are no reasons What reason do you need to be shown?
PESCA: For a while, it looked like the explanation for this act would remain locked away within Brenda Spencer. There was no trial. The most extensive interview that's ever been conducted with her was Steve Weegan's 10 minutes on the phone back in 1979. But some insight has been provided, unhappily, not by Spencer, but by the many teens after her who have taken guns into their hands and taken the lives of fellow students. Bill Woodward is the director of training and technical assistance for the Center for the Study of Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado.
Mr. BILL WOODWARD (Director, Training and Technical Assistance, Center for the Study of Prevention of Violence, University of Colorado): Every one of these kids that you look at that were involved in shootings, gave some indication beforehand that they were having some pretty serious problems. And there just often were not resources to get a handle on what those were.
PESCA: Some of Grover Cleveland's survivors, today in their early 30s, still experience physical pain from their wounds. Bob Geldof, of course went on to be knighted for his work with Live Aid, and Brenda Spencer remains in jail, ever inscrutable, but not alone in her actions. For Day to Day, I'm Mike Pesca.
Copyright © 2009 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
