Terror in
the Boondocks
But and if
ye suffer
for
righteousness' sake,
happy are
ye:
and be not
afraid of their terror,
neither be
troubled.
--
1 Peter 3:14
My friend Mike Nolles lives out in the country in
north-central Nebraska, with just 35 families sprinkled over 800 square miles.
It's the kind of a place where the entire community shows up for the school
Christmas program. If anyone dies, school lets out for the funeral, and it's
hard to find enough refrigerator space for all the donated food. Widows needn't
worry about calving and ranch chores, either: the neighbors will rally. That's
just the culture.
Mike with wife Trudy and
daughter Katie
But right now, Mike is dealing with a problem that not
even neighborliness can fix. Nebraska stands to lose its small, country
schools, and with them, what's even more precious: its country communities.
That's why Mike's giving everything he has to leading
Class I's United, a group of rural Nebraskans fighting to repeal the state
legislature's forced consolidation of small grade schools into larger town
districts many miles away. It's Referendum 422 on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Nebraska's rural schools mostly have higher test scores
for less cost than their urban counterparts. They prove that when adults are
close, children prosper.
Incredibly, the wave of school violence in our nation
washed over Mike's pastoral community recently. Nobody's immune. But it proved what
he's fighting for: that it's better to have our kids in smaller schools, close
to home. Let Mike tell:
"I was trying to move hay while
talking on a cell phone with an ear bud in when a call beeped in at about 1:15.
I recognized the number as the Pony Lake School. I immediately took the call
and was told by one of the teachers that they were under lockdown, as a
shooting threat had been placed against a Rock or Holt County school. I told
her I would be there immediately.
"I was in a four-wheel drive Ford
tractor with a loader and a 40-foot bale mover -- one mile from unloading and
two miles from home. I immediately phoned my dad, instructing him to take a
rifle and a Suburban and proceed to the school pronto. Four and a half miles
away but only two minutes later he was haphazardly parked in the parking lot
with cowboy hat on and a lever action .30-.30 rifle in hand. No one would screw
with this World War II vet's granddaughter.
"(Wife) Trudy was one half mile east
of our mailbox and I saw another mother in her Suburban traveling at a high
rate of speed heading for the school. I was able to reach her on her cell phone
and asked her to have Trudy waiting along the road. Black tire tracks later she
proceeded on to the school. It took me about eight minutes to reach my home
where I retrieved my SWAT bag out of the closet, grabbed two extra .45-caliber
clips and got in my Suburban.
"When I left my yard, which is one
mile from the county road, I saw two state troopers, lights flashing, heading
for the school. Heart rate at now quadruple, I floored it. Troopers were ahead
of me by a half-mile. When I careened into the parking lot my longtime friends,
troopers Doug Phillips and Ray Wiebelhurst, were beginning a sweep of the area.
I helped them search a group of trees and then we proceeded to the school. . . ."
Parents took sobbing kids home. Mike
stayed with the teachers that day and the next. A 41-year-old part-time
sheriff's deputy was arrested on suspicion of making terroristic threats. Bail:
$1 million.
No one was hurt, though Mike's heart
is still recovering, and he may need new tires. But the lessons have been
priceless: kids are everything, school is central, and when both are
threatened, to be close by instead of far away, with trusted friends alongside
you, are wonderful blessings.
Blessings . . . like the country
schools have been for generations of Nebraskans.
I hope the voters agree on Nov. 7.
Then things can get back to normal in our small communities with the great, big
hearts. †
