It's been more than five decades since Houstonians dealt with the horror and disbelief of an attack against the most innocent of victims in what should have been the safest of places, students at an elementary school.
It was September 15, 1959, when an ex-convict, 49-year-old Paul Orgeron showed up on Poe's campus, his five-year-old son in one hand and a suitcase packed with dynamite in the other. He was angry that he couldn't enroll his son in school because he didn't have the proper paperwork.
When he detonated the homemade bomb, it killed Orgeron and his son, along with two other students, a teacher and a custodian. Eighteen others were hurt, including two students who lost limbs.
On the 50th anniversary of that dark day, a ceremony was held at both Poe and Kolter elementary, a school named for teacher Jennie Kolter, who died trying to protect her students.
We spoke with her son on that day. William Kolter was chief resident at Hermann Hospital the day of the bombing and remembers having to pronounce his mother dead.
"By the time I got over there, the kids that needed to go to the hospital had already gone and that when I found mama on the ground with a sheet over her, so I had to pronounce her," he said.
It was a lasting and terrible memory for a man who lost his mother to the actions of a madman. And those who survived that horrific day at Poe Elementary so long ago are among the few who understand how the victims and their families in Connecticut are feeling right now, as this unthinkable nightmare plays out.
And they are no doubt wondering again how anyone could target the most defenseless among us with such evil abandon.
(Copyright ©2012 KTRK-TV/DT. All Rights Reserved.) Get more National/World »national/world, melanie lawson
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