ONE YEAR AFTER THE SNIPER
by Andrew Williams


To this observer/participant, Aspen Hill has not changed significantly in
the past year. The buses still thread their disparate ways through this
large, post-war community nestled between Rockville and Wheaton in highly
prosperous Montgomery County, Maryland. People still patronize the
shopping centers near the intersection of Aspen Hill Road and Connecticut
Avenue, where the first shootings took place. One of the few signs that
triggers memories of last October is the white poster honoring bus driver
Conrad L. Johnson that adorns many of the county's Ride-On buses. And of
course there's former police chief Charles Moose's book about the
contretemps, which arrived in book stores about a month before the first
anniversary. But otherwise, life goes on, as it has since then and as it
must do in times of calm or chaos.
WTTG-TV--known locally and colloquially as Fox 5--devoted half of last
Thursday's evening broadcast to a recap of last October's events. With the
usual panoply of overly dramatic music and enunciation, the program
portrayed a community "gripped in terror" and "paralyzed by fear," as if
the denizens of Aspen Hill had stayed home the entire month cowering under
their beds. I found myself wishing for the nth time for the return of
Edward R. Murrow, or at least a pretense of simple reportage minus the now
de rigueur emotionalism.
Such bombastic reportage trivializes the heroics, the pain and the
ordinary everyday actions of local residents during that month of siege.
The real message, of course, is the infinite fragility of life and the
need we share to touch others and tell them what they mean to us. It was
in that month, surrounded by uncertainty at work and home, that I told a
woman who was very close to me that I was in love with her. Sniper or no,
I probably would have told her around that time, but the craziness around
me significantly hastened that decision.
It's now a year later. That woman is, sadly, gone from my life and I am
finally healing from the grief and loss. The two suspects are undergoing a
trial which is being closely watched by the victims' families and their
friends, as well as all the spectators and participants in the events of
October 2002. And life goes on, as it did before and during the month of
the sniper. Perhaps that's the biggest lesson of all.

Copyright 2003 by Andrew Williams. Free to forward with attribution.