We all have bucket lists of places we want to visit. I’ve never been to Hawaii. That is on my list. Perry, Iowa, is also on it. The allure of that town in the middle of Iowa isn’t its beaches, although the Racoon River does flow through it.
Rather, it’s a unique connection between Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, and Perry. They were both stops on Babe Ruth’s barnstorming tour in October 1922. Those two were the only small towns on a trip that included Denver and Kansas City.
Babe and Yankee teammate Bob Meusel played in Perry on Friday, Oct. 13. The next two days they were in Lincoln and Omaha. Monday, Oct. 16, they were in Sleepy Eye. The weather was miserable at all those places, cold and damp. But it was still a big deal having America’s biggest star in your town.
I’ve talked to a couple of history buffs from Perry on the phone. The concern there was a threatened appearance by the Ku Klux Klan at the game. It never occurred. The Perryites seem a little perplexed about the celebrations we have made of Babe’s visit to Sleepy Eye. But that’s just us.
I have wanted to drive down to Perry with a baseball friend but haven’t yet. Perry is 40 miles northwest of Des Moines. It is 200 miles almost straight south of Sleepy Eye, so it’d be an easy weekend. The ballfield where Ruth played is gone, but the hotel he stayed at is there. We could stay at the historic Hotel Pattee, find the location of the park and visit with some old-timers. Maybe go to Des Moines for an Iowa Cubs game to complete our baseball pilgrimage.
A few weeks ago, my attention was caught when I heard Perry mentioned on the radio news. It was not good news. On Jan. 6, Perry was the next in a line of school shootings in the U.S. It won’t be the last.
As far as school shootings go, this wasn’t as bad as some. That is small relief to the family of the sixth-grade boy and the high school principal who were killed. Ahmir Jolliff was nicknamed Smiley and had a “spirit bigger than his 11-year-old body could contain,” according to his pastor. Principal Dan Marburger intentionally put himself in the line of fire to protect students, a truly heroic act.
Perry is far down the list of worst school shootings. Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Parkland — these are names seared in our consciousness, 27, 21, 17 dead. All those victims were as alive and life filled as Ahmir and Dan before their shooters arrived.
I’ve not been to Perry, but as a Midwestern town, I’m sure it is like others. Surrounded by farms, it was founded to support agriculture that was spreading west across the prairie soils of the growing country. It has a main street that has had to transition as the economy changed in the last century.
Every Midwestern town had a school, which was the center of the community and point of town pride. In many towns, the school sits empty, a historic relic. But the Perry High School has held up well, with an enrollment of 573, home of the Bluejays. Jan. 6 was the first day back to school after Christmas vacation.
Perry is similar in many ways to my town and your town. The unspoken message of the shooting there is that a school shooting can happen anywhere. But we knew that. Anywhere in the U.S., that is. School shootings are almost nonexistent everywhere else in the world.
Whenever one of these happens, immediately we hear there needs to be emphasis on mental and emotional health.
But does the U.S. have a monopoly on unstable and disturbed people?
No, we don’t. What we do have is guns, lots of them.
The U.S. has 120 firearms per 100 persons. That is more than double the next country on the list, the Falkland Islands. Most other countries have fewer than 10. It’s a massive difference.
Is it a coincidence that the country with by far the most guns has the most school shootings?
Do you think so?
I admit that I’ve not used guns a lot myself. I didn’t grow up hunting. Outside of the occasional farm skunk and tin can, I’ve not shot much.
I don’t dislike guns in the right places and in the right hands. I have many friends who do hunt, and I have great respect for sportsmen and women. They lead efforts to protect the environment as they work to maintain habitat for wildlife.
I knew my son had an interest in hunting, and I bought him a .22 rifle for his 16th birthday. When he went into the National Guard, I enjoyed hearing about his training with the various weapons soldiers use.
In my lifetime, there has been a large shift in gun ownership. Fewer people hunt, and there are fewer guns for that. But there has been a massive explosion in handguns. The purchasers of those handguns seldom had hunting in mind. Rather, it was with their personal security in mind.
All those guns purchased with security in mind have done a funny thing. Americans are more likely to die by gun violence than anywhere else on Earth that is not at war. That is a combination of homicide, suicide and accidental shootings, all of which are higher here than anywhere else.
In addition to 145 million handguns in the U.S., there are 20 million AR-style weapons in circulation now. These automatic shooting machines are the weapons of choice for school shooters.
Shouldn’t all of this cause a reasonable discussion about guns, perhaps limiting their proliferation? The licensing and safety standards for driving a car are much greater than for owning a gun.
Like too many things, guns have become politicized. If you are a Republican, you can never vote for any type of gun control, no matter that a majority of Americans support it. I have voted for many Republicans in the past. But on this issue, they are simply trapped. Most are pro-life and pro-gun. Guns have become the leading cause of death of American children. Those bullets are decidedly not pro-life.
The next time there is school shooting, we know several things that will happen. There will be calls for gun control, which will quickly be drowned out by the ferocious howls of the “gun-rights advocates.” And the satirical website The Onion will again post this headline: “‘No Way to Prevent This’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens.”
I still hope to visit Perry someday. It’s not a large town, so I will find the school. I will offer up a prayer when I do.
Randy Krzmarzick farms on the home place west of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, where he lives with his wife, Pam. Republished by permission of SleepyEye.com.
Well said.