Austin was not big enough to hold all its grief on May 18, 1978, when two authority figures- a policeman and a schoolteacher- were shot to death hours apart while doing their jobs. A gurney rolled past her, a sheet pulled over the body. School Address (Store Correction) 3700 N Hills Dr Austin . Logan Bazar, who hadnt been present during the shooting, was dispatched to Graysons classroom to retrieve his personal effects. I have not seen you in a long time. . AUSTIN, Texas (FOX 7 Austin) - The principal of Murchison Middle School has announced his resignation. On Monday, June 5, 1978, Jo Anne and George flew with their son and a probation officer to Dallas, where John reported to Timberlawn. If you dont pass it, she said, youll fail the class. The prospect of failure loomed. John attempted to make small talk, but Smith abruptly cut him off and told him that he owed a visit to someone else. The Christian boy reportedly was a straight "A" student, but had been given al failing grade in. Class had already started without him. And though sentencing laws vary widely across the country and have evolved over time, the system has historically tended to ask a great deal more of juvenile killers. Ray listened to the others recite the latest reports about their former classmate, the shooter, John Christian, the son of President Lyndon B. Johnsons former press secretary George Christian: He lives a few blocks from here. Close. His classmates still wonder: What really happened? Elaine Moore, a former student of Rod Graysons who witnessed the shooting, photographed at Murchison in February. I still only slow dance, because Im not too rhythmic. . I havent heard from you, so I dont really know what to write. 25 years ago, on May 18, 1978, John Daniel Christian walked into Murchison Middle School with a gun and in front of 30 8th graders shot their English teacher 3 times, killing him. Then the images resurfaced out of nowhere. Austin Metro Area; Travis County; Austin; At-a-Glance. iCal Feed Instructions Print Export Customize Calendar View Jan 2023 Month Day List The local media began to swarm the school as well. . His breathing became shallow. How do I deal with it? he recalled. Yet John continued to hover over his life like a spectral question mark, both inexplicable and utterly familiar. Then, as we spoke, he started to cry. The 1978 killing of Rod Grayson wasnt the first murderous intrusion into the sanctity of Americas schools. Someone posted a chart that Mitsuno Baurmeister, now living in Northern California, had painstakingly diagrammed, days after the tragedy, of where each of them was sitting when the shooter stepped through the doorway. Something in his psyche began to crack open. Laura Grayson has been back to the cemetery only once since Rods funeral. FOX 7 Austin AUSTIN, Texas - 2 AISD schools were cleared this afternoon after an investigation into reports of armed subjects. Grayson 40 Years Later, and invited former classmates and teachers to join. For an hour, five of them stood on the dry, unshaded ground, offering words of thanks to the man who had remained frozen in their memory as their 29-year-old teacher. I had this recurring dream. I dont know. He also said, I dont want to say anything that might hurt my boy.. As she would later say, At that point, as a mother, as a teacher, as a human being, as pained as I was that Rod was dead, I felt sorry for that kid. His eyes were wide open. 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. Rebecca Leamon remembered how Grayson gently encouraged her to challenge her shyness. Jimmy Carters Peanut-and-Egg Taco Made Quite the Impression on San Antonians. Still, Ray kept talking. . After 20 months in a psychiatric facility, he was freed. 3700 N Hills Dr, Austin, Texas 78731. Murchison Middle School 6 - 8 Austin Independent School District 3700 North Hills Drive, Austin, TX, 78731 Tel: (512) 414-3254 5/10 GreatSchools Rating 21 reviews Parent Rating 1,408. Middle School Football-Austin ISD 2022 - 2023 Sport: Football Level: Middle School Division 1 - North Zone 8th Grade A Team Overall District Division 1 - South Zone 7th Grade A Team Overall District Division 1 - South Zone 7th Grade B Team Overall District Division 1 - South Zone 8th Grade A Team Overall District He enrolled at Highland Park High in the middle of his sophomore year. But after talking about all this, Ive been in a very weird state of mind. Umpqua. John Christian is sitting right behind me, she whispered to her mother. How are you doing?. Extracurriculars Band Choir Orchestra Dance / Cheerleading Newspaper / Yearbook National Junior Honor Society Keyboarding View My Listings; . . Ray wasnt entirely sure how his outreach would be received. Within minutes, I was learning for the first time about the shooting on May 18, 1978. The noises: the gunshots, the screams, the scraping of chairs. Johns fate rested in the hands of state district judge Hume Cofer, a by-the-book jurist who was not regarded as a softie. 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. He ran to the principals office and told the administrators at the front desk what had just happened. That was such a traumatic time, a former student wrote. Advertisement. Ive been up here now for a year and three months, some of which has been real hell, the rest of which has really been good. She led several of them into a nurses examination room and told them to stay there. The headboard was old and tattered on one of the beds. Scaled Score: Student Achievement: 87 . In fact, Ray barely remembered a single thing about that entire year. John returned to his passion, drama, and also became the news editor of the school paper, the Bagpipe. Murchison Middle School is a public middle school in Austin. Ratings & Designations of Murchison Middle School. So as a result, I just have to process what Ive got. It has 1,392 students through grade 6 to 8. The University of Texas at Austin UTeach Natural Sciences 103 W 24th Street, Mail Stop G2550 Austin, TX 78712 Phone: (512) 232-2770 Fax: (512) 232-1491 Seared into his brain were two images: his friend John walking into the classroom with a rifle in his hand and his teacher lying on the ground in a pool of blood. His Murchison friends were gone. Tel: (512) 414-3254. www.murchisonmatadors.org. At this time there are 136 homes for sale in Murchison Middle School with a median list price of $641,250 and 27 days on the market. Ray looked me upand, yes, I had just published my first novel. You know, I consider myself to be a pretty strong-minded person. One of his new classmates came across a newspaper story that identified John by name and described him as schizophrenic. The classmate wondered, Why is he at our school? A few days later, Ray drove twelve hours northwest to Littleton, Colorado. He asked if anyone wanted to meet up. But Ray had not so much as acknowledged his own emotional scar tissue until one morning in April 1999, when he was driving through the University of Arkansas campus and heard on the radio about the mass shooting at Columbine High School. Peculiarities form the contours of the Murchison shooting. Twenty-nine children were handpicked for Eichenbaums and Graysons classes. . 3.0 22 Reviews. We were all interested in women, but he wasnt the uninformed idiot I was. 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 One person close to John told me that he has felt great sadness over the years for what he did. According to his classmates, he was the smartest one in the whole group, a great student and a really good artist with a wry wit who drew political cartoons that could have been in any newspaper. His preternatural maturity meant that he always got cast as the older person in the school plays, and he dressed like a grown-up (often in striped short-sleeved shirts and crisp slacks). Show All News. Shop your Murchison Middle School Matadors Apparel Store for the latest selection of Matadors fan gear! For one, there is the trajectory of John Christian: from gifted student to teenage killer to middle-aged tax attorney quietly working and living in Austin today. The worst John could expectunder state juvenile laws that would be toughened during the ninetieswas to be judged guilty of delinquent conduct and confined to a Texas Youth Commission facility until he turned eighteen. SAVE SCHOOL. See all 36 photos taken at Murchison Middle School by 1,023 visitors. 6:22 a.m.: The two boys allegedly threatened a clerk with the gun, demanded money and also stole beer and other items during a robbery at the DK convenience store, 1733 Brown St. and Murchison. Two students and one adult suffered non-life-threatening injuries during a shooting at Rigby Middle School in Rigby, Idaho, on Thursday, according to a statement from the school district obtained . As John turned and walked out without another word, the classroom exploded into screams. You didnt know what to do with all the emotions, John Ray recalled. 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.) Advertisement. This month's Texas Monthly has a fascinating article on a shooting that happened at Murchison Middle School in 1978. And it is a medical fact that the adolescent brain is far from fully developedwhich means, among other things, that a violent youth, even a murderous one, is not inexorably destined to a life of brutal criminality. Rolling past the high school, wandering through the memorial sites and services, Ray felt curiously at home with the grieving, as if his own trauma had been given permission to voice itself. A few weeks before the shooting, Grayson was at home grading papers when he handed one of them to his wife and said, Tell me what you think about this. It was a short story written by John. Those concerns subsided over time. 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. I have definitely changed a lot since I came here, and it has been a really good feeling to change this way. John Ray, a former student of Rod Graysons who witnessed the shooting, photographed at Murchison in February. Johns mom, Jo Anne, was an accomplished lawyer and patron of Austins arts scene. Tehama County Arts Council will co-host a California Creative Corps Listening Session at 724 Main St. in Red Bluff starting at 4 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 5. One of them brought a towel and some cleanser to scrub their teachers gravestone. Maybe better to ask how Im getting through. Is he . Two of the students, John Christian and John Ray, would be giving an oral presentation of a chapter from Harriet Beecher Stowes classic novel Uncle Toms Cabin. Sitting on a stool, he would begin class with a meditation exercise. Smith was the first one out the door. 3 stars . The teacher on the floor. Situated at what was, back then, the northern edge of the city, the neighborhood was populated with doctors, bankers, professors, restaurateurs, and pastors. Santa Fe. She saw him instead in dreams, and when she lit candles, she remembered how he once laughed at her Catholic rituals and then said, Were doing a pact. Minton hired two psychiatrists to evaluate John and supply expert testimony. Logan Bazar recalled how the teacher regularly let him out of class five minutes early so that he could avoid being jumped by two bullies. Murchison Middle School serves 1,246 students in grades 6-8. Laura gazed at it in disbelief. There, they began to see John Christian on campus. Im going to bring a gun tomorrow., He wasnt laughing. Edlio Login Powered by Edlio. One overheard a cop tell another, He didnt make it.. Armour is among the criminal justice reformers who have pressed for opportunities in which all stakeholders in a tragic event can come together and articulate their discontents and needs in the interest of restorative justice. But he had yet to make peace with the incident. Pine Middle School shooting. Sitting, as he always did, not behind his desk but on his stool directly in front of them, Grayson had begun by asking his students what the hell had happened the previous day. I think we can tell the story, we can own the pain, we can call this what it was, without being in the spirit of hurting the person who did it.. But she could see Rods cowboy boots poking out. She warned him that he needed to study hard for the upcoming test. Murchison Middle School 3700 N Hills Dr . Schools Near Murchison Middle School. 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