January 31, 2005, NPR Special, Analysis: Grover Cleveland Elementary School shooting 26 years ago, with Alex Chadwick,

January 31, 2005, NPR Special, Analysis: Grover Cleveland Elementary School shooting 26 years ago, with Alex Chadwick,

Time: 4:00-5:00 PM

This is DAY TO DAY. I'm Alex Chadwick.

Coming up, we call an Iraqi electoral commissioner about that vote yesterday.

First, this. There are anniversaries we don't so much observe as dread: the events connected to them something we'd prefer to forget, days we still cannot accept or fully understand. DAY TO DAY's Mike Pesca notes that this past Saturday, January 29th, was the day 26 years ago when something you would have considered unthinkable actually did take place, the mass shooting of children at an American school yard. As Mike reports, it happened in San Diego.

MIKE PESCA reporting:

By San Diego's 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 Wiegan (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 WIEGAN (Reporter, The San Diego 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, '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: Wiegan 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 word that, yes, this girl's house was where the shooting was coming from. Wiegan asked the obvious question.

Mr. WIEGAN: I asked her why she was doing it, and she said, `'Cause 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 "I Don't Like Mondays")

BOOMTOWN RATS: 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 nihilism of punk and, along with a great chorus, took the tune to number one in the UK.

(Soundbite of "I Don't Like Mondays")

BOOMTOWN RATS: 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 8.

Mr. COHEN: And 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 it'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 "I Don't Like Mondays")

BOOMTOWN RATS: And he can see no reason '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 Wiegan'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 and Prevention of Violence): 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: Today, school shootings happen all the time: recently near Philadelphia; before that, Baltimore. Last week, it was determined that a 16-year-old shooter at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota, will be tried as an adult. These crimes are now covered as local news, and the impression is that the spate of school shootings has come and gone, which is not true. According to the National School Safety Center, 2003, 2004 saw 42 violent deaths in schools.

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.

CHADWICK: More just ahead on DAY TO DAY from NPR News.

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