How To Stop A School Shooting

The Citizen’s Medal of Honor was first awarded in 2008 to recognize ordinary Americans whose actions “epitomize the concept of ‘service beyond self’ … ‘above and beyond’” their call of duty, whatever it may be.

Molly Hudgens' duty was as a guidance counselor at Sycamore Middle School, in Tennessee, where in 2016 she came face to face with a potential school shooter – and managed to talk him out of it. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Bushkin. Welcome back to Medal of Honor Stories of Courage.
I'm Malcolm Glawell. Today we have something a little different
for you. A few weeks ago I spoke to a
woman named Molly Hudgens. You likely don't know Molly or
her story, but I think you should. Molly is a

(00:37):
recipient of the Citizens Medal of Honor, which was first
awarded in two thousand and eight to recognize ordinary Americans
whose actions quote epitomize the concept of service beyond self,
above and beyond their call of duty, whatever it may be.
In Molly's case, her duty was as a guidance counselor

(00:59):
at Sycamore Middle School in Tennessee, where in twenty sixteen,
she came face to face with the potential school shooter
and managed to talk him out of it. Through the
course of the conversation, you'll hear in Molly many of
the qualities we've tried to highlight in this series so far, faith, humility,
dedication to service, and an incredible ability to think quickly

(01:22):
under pressure, and of course, courage.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Molly, good morning, How are you.

Speaker 1 (01:41):
I'm good? Are you are? You're in your office at school.

Speaker 2 (01:44):
I'm in my office at school. Sure I am.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
And you're in where you're in Pleasantville? But no, what's
the day.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Of the town pleasant View, Tennessee, View, Tennessee.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
That's not where all the country stars live.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
No, they do not live in this part of the world.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
And how long? How long have you been teaching them?

Speaker 2 (02:04):
I just finished my twenty fifth year. I have spent
my entire educational career. I got hired here at twenty
two and so I've only worked here.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
Yeah. Now, did were you always a guidance counselor No?

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I started out actually as a teacher. I taught seventh
and eighth grade language arts for eight years before I
moved to the counseling departments. So this will be my
I'll be starting my nineteenth year in the counseling department.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Yeah. And so you came to Sycamore straight out of college.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
I sure did. I was a desperation higher our principal.
Our principal had three teachers who were all leading consecutively
on maternity leave, and I was planning to be a
high school English teacher. This was a middle school, but
I felt like it would be a way to get
my foot in the door, and so I agreed to
do it. I taught fifth grade, sixth grade, and seventh
grade math, language, Arts, science, social stay all four subjects

(02:59):
over the course of that one semester, and by the
end of it, I just loved the school so much.
I didn't think I could leave. I knew the kids
would come and go, but the staff probably would. And
that is so true of the culture here. I mean,
our principal has never worked She's going to be starting
her thirtieth year here at Sycamore, never works anywhere else.

(03:20):
Our assistant principal has only worked in our county twenty
five years. I've only been here, you know. So people
tend to come here and stay, and that is such
an important piece I think of our story is the
culture that we have. People are very embedded.

Speaker 1 (03:35):
Why do you think people stay? What's special about the school?

Speaker 2 (03:38):
Well, because it's very much a family, and just like
a family, we don't always agree, we don't always get along.
That people who work here want to be here. We
are notorious for hiring our former students. I think we
have eight of them on staff right now. People come back.
You know it's a good place to be. You know

(03:58):
that you're loved and cared about. And we use the
word family a lot to describe Sycamore, and so it
would be hard to leave your family. So for me,
it's been impossib to leave here.

Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So you'd been there for years, and
you had told me you had had prior to what
happened that day, you had been increasingly engaged with the
question of school violence. Tell me about how did it
come to your attention in those in that period.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
So my first year here at Sycamore was the ninety
eight ninety nine school year when we had six mass
shootings across our country that culminated with the shooting at
Columbine on April twentieth of nineteen ninety nine. And I
remember that day vividly. I went home, and that was
when we had just started having twenty four hour news
coverage and you could watch it all day long, and
I was I was just fascinated, not by I think

(04:55):
a lot of the details that most of the general
public wanted to know about the specific situation, But what
I couldn't write my mind around is how could two
boys create a plan of this magnitude over a year's
time and nobody know about it? And so I started researching,
literally just googled anything that I could find about mass
shootings that had happened on school campuses. I read every book.

(05:17):
I think I own every book that's been written about
a school shooting all because in my mind, I thought,
if I could, what if we had a kid like
that here at school? What if he was in my class?
Would I be able to recognize that child was in trouble?
Is there?

Speaker 1 (05:33):
You know?

Speaker 2 (05:33):
In my mind, I thought, is there a way to
interrupt this process? To find them when they're young enough
that you could then intervene and change that pathway, change
that direction. And even I spent so much time doing research,
I ended up on the Homeland Security watch list at
one points. And I understand now why, Yeah, I mean
I was contacted by someone and just stated, why are

(05:57):
you looking into so much of this? And I think
in hindsight, I mean, I even tried to find specifically
writings that were taken from at the time those two
particular attackers at Columbine, because I felt like, if I
want to find a kid like this, I'm going to
have to understand them, and I'm an English teacher. Most

(06:18):
of what is going to come out would possibly come
through writings that they would do in class, and so
that started the path. I spent ten years doing that recording,
writing down, taking notes on everything that I knew, and
I went to our director's schools and so listen, there's
only eighteen school counselors in our county, but we don't
really have many trainings that are geared toward what we do.

(06:40):
You know, is it possible that I could, because by
that point I'd moved to the counseling department. You know,
is it possible for me to do a training? I've
written one. It's called Recognizing Red Flags an Educator's Role
in Preventing School violence, and it was an in depth
psychological analysis of about thirty school shooters. So I think

(07:00):
that God was preparing me in a mighty way. He
gave me eighteen years of talking to kids, both in
classroom settings and individuals, and he gave me all this
content knowledge that I had learned about psychopathy. I'd learned
about psychosis. I've learned about even hostage negotiations and things

(07:21):
that most people wouldn't just know in their average lives.
I'd spend a great deal of time fully enmeshed in
this topic. For reasons I didn't understand, and to be
quite honest, my family was concerned about that. You know,
why would I be so focused on this? And I
would just always say, I'm not sure, but I just
feel like I have to know as much as I can.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, I know, it's the whole thing is kind of crazy.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
It is.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Give me a sense of what you learned from that
immersion in all of that, What did you learn that
prepared you for what happened that day.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
One of the biggest things I learned is that as adults,
we spend a lot of time talking to kids, and
I don't know that we listen as much as we should.
And when I use the word listen, I don't just
mean verbally, I mean through their writings. I had an
open window to some of them, just based on topics
we researched or we talked about, or they chose to

(08:16):
write about when they could do free writing. And I
looked at writings taken from the attackers at Columbine. Several
of those things were things they wrote for class assignments,
and so I think I started realizing if kids are
writing about violence, especially if it's connected to prior events

(08:37):
or prior people in history who committed atrocities, then I
needed to pay attention. Those all became red flags.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Did you all these years, when you're immersing yourself into subject,
do you imagine that one day you would be face
to face with a potential shooter.

Speaker 2 (08:56):
You know, I've never been asked that and never really
thought about it. So I'll tell you the first thing
that came into my head when you asked that was
I had ironically had a dream a couple of times. Now.
The scenario that played out here was nothing at all
like the dream I had had, but it did involve
a kid bringing a gun to school and me somehow
being involved in a peaceful resolution. And I assumed at

(09:21):
the time that that was just because I had was
reading so much about this. I really thought that the intention.
I really thought that God's plan was just for me
to have a passion that I could go and talk
to other people about, to try to convince them of
importance of not just school safety, but of mental health
and in brain health. And I wanted people to pay

(09:44):
attention to kids who were struggling. I felt like there
were a lot that had flown under the radar that
I had probably missed, you know, as a teacher and
becoming a counselor could see more of just in their
faces and their words that they were struggling, so that
that could bring them in then, you know, and have
those conversations. So I don't I never really thought that

(10:05):
that would happen here, But in the moment when I
realized what was going on, I did have a flash
before my eyes. It was you know, people talk sometimes
about if you're going to pass away, sometimes your life
will flash before your eyes, But for me, it was
not that. It was a flash of all these things
I had read and researched, and I remember thinking, you know,

(10:27):
I was kind of like Noah, and I was trying
to build an arc and nobody had ever seen it rain.
So people didn't really want to talk about school violence.
They just it was kind of the head and the
sand mentality that if we just pretend that it's not
going to happen, or we don't talk about it, we're
not going to invite it in. And so I sat
there on those moments when I realized how serious this
was and thought for such a time as this, And

(10:50):
you know, Esther is one of my favorite characters in
the Bible, and I remember thinking, wow, Lord, you know
of all the hundreds, you know, of thousands of schools,
and probably as many kids are more. You know, you
brought that kid to Sycamore Middle School, and you you
brought him to me. And it's like, all of a sudden,
I had this moment of like, this is why. And

(11:11):
I couldn't believe it. I couldn't believe it. I still can't,
as you can tell, obviously, I still stand in all
of that.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Let's talk about that morning. So this is twenty sixteen.
Do you remember what's the exact date.

Speaker 2 (11:25):
September twenty eighth, And I remember that because it was
the day before my fortieth birthday.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
So it's the beginning of the school year. You were
three weeks in or so. And is it anything unusual
about that? Is it a day unfolding like any other?

Speaker 2 (11:42):
At the beginning, it's a day unfolding. I was training
to run my first marathon, and I had run nine
point six nine miles that morning before the treadmill overheated
and went outside to finish that last little you know,
part around running around our pool, just so I could
say I had my ten miles in.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
Yeah, I got oh you're I'm a runner too, but
oh yeah, I recognize the signs you're serious.

Speaker 2 (12:06):
Yeah, so I knew, you know, I got dressed for school.
I wore clothes that later I would look down at
my lap and think, you know, if I were going
to die in this, if this was gonna be my
crime scene photo, I would addressed better. I would have
not had on this eight dollar skirt that I don't
even like, you know, I think I think God gave
me some moments of humor in the midst of this,

(12:27):
But yeah, dropped my I'll describe that.

Speaker 1 (12:29):
You what what was the skirt? You were were you
were skirt? It was? What's going on over there?

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Well, because the previous day I had been in classroom
guidance all day, and I knew that I was going
to be back in my office trying to unearth all
the paperwork emails I'd gotten the day before, so I
probably wouldn't be leaving it. Not many people would see me.
You know, when you're when you're about to experience the
best and the worst day of your life, the biggest
crisis you'll ever face, you are not only are you

(12:58):
not going to be prepared for it, you most likely
will not be dressed for it. So I wasn't, you know,
And I thought I was just going to be here.
I knew the kids wouldn't care what I had on.
I'd be sitting behind my desk all day. It was
a comfortable skirt, but it was the black and white
palm tree printed skirts, and like I said, I didn't
even really like it, but it was eight dollars, so
I bought it. I have three of them.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Now, yeah, well it's your lucky skirt at.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Skirt, Yeah, but yeah. I dropped my oldest son off
at his coach's house, because kids, if your parent's a teacher,
you have to be at school first thing in the morning,
way before everybody else, so he would ride to school
later with his coach. I dropped our youngest son off
at daycare, and I came to school and I pulled
in the parking lot and I saw all these kids
like starting to gather outside, and I remember thinking, oh,

(13:44):
my goodness, you know, it's a kitchen on fire. What's
going on? So I jumped out of the car kind
of started moving toward the kids and realized that September
twenty eighth of twenty sixteen was National cu at the
Pole Day, the one day a year student so choose
they can gather at the base of their school's flagpole
for prayer. And so my intention was to run in here,
throw my things down behind my desk, and run back

(14:06):
out to supervise, because you leave very many middle school
kids alone for very long, and something's going to happen
that's going to require a lot of paperwork on the
part of an adult. And so I just thought i'd
run out in supervising. And that was just never meant
to be because while I was here, standing here from
from my things down, glanced at my calendar, this young
man came in and and I had met I recognized

(14:29):
him immediately because I just met with him the friday before.
I remember when he came in, I realized his defenses
were way up. But I also realized pretty quickly I'd
never seen that kid before, and that bothered me. And
I said, hey, you know, I don't think we've met,
and so I kind of introduced myself and and I said,
you know, I understand your you're kind of new to

(14:50):
our school. And he said, you know, yes, ma'am. I
came in last year and I said, okay, well that
that kind of explains that, you know, and we're newly
into this eighth grade year, so it just hadn't met him,
and so I just I just told to me, I
just thought maybe we could kind of check in see
how things are going. And he sat down right across
from my desk here I had two brown chairs. I've

(15:11):
learned that some kids, if they talk to you, they
want a barrier between you and them for comfort purposes.
Other kids, I have a chair that sits right beside
my desk because some of them they want their needs
to be touching yours. They're fine with being close to you.
And so he had sat down across from me, and
we had just kind of started talking, and then all
of a sudden, it was kind of like the damn
broke and there were all these things in his life

(15:33):
that I felt like he'd been holding on to that
he just let pour out and I kind of just
skooted back in my chair and let him talk. And
he did. But one of the things that inside of me,
in hindsight, was another red flag that was raised, was
the fact that he was telling me this story that
I knew aspects of it were most likely not possible,

(15:59):
but there was just enough of it that some of
it could have been probable. And I remember writing some
notes on the sticky note because this was a Friday,
and I thought, I'm going to look these things up
over the weekend and see if this is even possible.
But what really struck me was, I think this kid
believes this story. You know, he's weaving this together, and

(16:22):
I think he'd believes.

Speaker 1 (16:23):
I know you don't want to tell me this story,
but what sort of a story is he telling you?
Can you give me just a sense.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Of just a story about some things that he was
involved in that were very adult like, kind of like
if I told you a story about me owning a
fortune five hundred company, right, you know, I'm sitting here,
I'm an adult. I can tell you this story. I
can probably create a pretty good one. But the whole
time you're to me thinking, well, I've never heard of

(16:50):
Molly Eedgens before, you know. So there were pieces of
it that just did not seem possible. But what fascinated
me was I thought, I think this kid believes what
he's telling me, and I think he believes that I
believe him, And so obviously I was concerned, so and
of course I learned a lot about psychology that I

(17:12):
would not have known otherwise. I've read the works of
doctor Peter Langman, who is considered to be one of
the world's leading experts on mass s sheotings that happened
with teenagers, especially in school environments, and doctor Langman's work
was crucial to me in the moments that this was happening,
because I was able to recognize, based on all of

(17:34):
these other case studies, what I believed was a psychosis
or psychoses in process, and began to learn a very
valuable lesson that day that reality is really about perspective.
It doesn't really matter what's real, It only matters what

(17:56):
people perceive to be real. And so in these moments
with this child, it became crucial for me to accept
his reality. And I do remember praying you know Lord
helped me to not get lost in this. But I
had to try to meet him where he was. We
use those words a lot, and meet the child where
they are, and that was very important. I don't think

(18:17):
that that piece would have occurred had I not had
all this background research. So he talked for forty five
minutes and I remember thinking, he's missed an entire class period.
I've got to get him back to class. And so
I said to him myself, listen, you have you know,
you've really unburdened a lot today, you've shared a lot.
Would you like to come back maybe one day next

(18:39):
week and then we can meet again and talk and
and he he said yes, he would like to do that,
and so I wrote his name on my list.

Speaker 1 (18:47):
That's the crucial moment.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
The crucial moment, oh shuts.

Speaker 1 (18:50):
In this whole. I mean, I know where there's many
much more to the story, but that moment, you've established
a connection with him, and you've you're the safe place
he can go, and that's why he comes back, I think.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
So. I think there were several things. The biggest one
I was willing to listen. I didn't in a I
didn't challenge what he said. I didn't point out anything
that I thought was a falsehood. I just listened and
gave him a place to share that and then offered
to listen more. And so I think you're right. You
know it was a it was a safe place, and

(19:25):
that's most likely why he did come back.

Speaker 1 (19:27):
So you're looking at this boy he's boy, and he's
telling you a story that is in part maybe part real,
with part fantasy. And what sort of other signs is
he giving you? Is he is he agitated? Is he
hostile to you? Is he No?

Speaker 2 (19:46):
Quite the opposite. Actually, when I look back on that,
I think about how he was very articulate, he was
very bright. We made good eye contact, there was good conversation,
you know. He I did realize that I had perceived
him just in hindsight, as a quieter student. His grades

(20:08):
were solid, he did not have a massive disciplinary record.
When we talk about a lot of these kids who
commit these atrocities, one of the things that people fail
to recognize is that a lot of times they are
the outliers. They are not on the radar of anyone.
Sometimes they are, but a lot of the times they're not.

(20:28):
And that is because if someone is suffering from a psychosis,
they can be psychotic in one way and function perfectly
normally in many other ways. They can hold jobs, they
can come to school, they can do work, they can
participate in class discussion, they can have friends. A lot
of them become very good, especially the older, they get
at covering up what they perceive to be taboo behavior,

(20:50):
and I think that some of the things that he
was experiencing, he was testing the waters with me to
see how I would react that Friday, to see if
I would react strongly, or if I would say, you know, well,
that's not possible, or if I would question what he
was saying. And I didn't, And that, to me was
another crucial piece, because you know, you fast forward to

(21:13):
the next week, we come back on Monday, I had
this running list of kids to see. We try to
see them in the order that they request to see them,
kind of like they've taken a ticket, unless obviously it's
a crisis situation that then involves us to bump them,
you know, to the front of the line. But I
never got to him on Monday, and then on Tuesday,
I was in classroom guidance with eighth graders all day long,

(21:35):
and so Wednesday morning I just hadn't gotten to him yet.
But that's okay, because he came back.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
We'll be back in a minute, So tell me about that.
It's Wednesday morning, and is he Is he in your

(22:09):
office when you arrive or are you in your office
and he comes through the door.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
No, I had just put my things down to go
back out for the prayer at the poll to kind
of supervise, and he came in and he said, hey,
miss Hudgens, would it be okay if I came back
to talk to you during related arts, which is the
time where kids have pe or art or health. I
looked at my calendar. I knew eighth grade I had
that at ten thirty. I didn't have anything scheduled for

(22:32):
that time. So I said, hey, that no problem. You
just come back then. If you need a note from
your teacher, you let me know. And he said okay,
and he left, and I just thought, well, I hadn't
gotten him yet, but when they come back again, you
usually bump them up higher on the list, and so
I thought, I'll see him first thing this morning at
ten thirty. And so then I went about my morning duty.
I mean, it's eerie in some ways to watch myself

(22:52):
on surveillance video. I'm walking through the hallways of the school.
I stopped and straighten the lanyard of one of our
eighth grade teachers I'd worked with for twenty years, never
thinking at all that anything's wrong. I mean, I'm coming
back to the counseling department, and I'm almost skipping because
I know that Glenn, my co counselor, has prepared breakfast
and we're gonna eat and talk about our day. And

(23:14):
I was in Glenn's office, which is adjacent to mine,
with my back to the door, when the young man
came in and I noticed he was there because Glenn
looked up from his plate and he said, well, hey, son,
you know what can we do for you? And I
heard the kid say I was supposed to meet with
Miss Hudgens at ten thirty, but I don't think I
can wait until then. And I remember looking at Glenn

(23:36):
and almost like rolling my eyes, and I was thinking, oh,
my goodness, my breakfast is going to be cold, and
then thinking that that was kind of selfish, and just
turning and smiling and saying, well, hey, honey, that's okay.
You just head on over to my office and I'll
be over there in a second. And so I remember
like wolfing down, you know, the rest of breakfast, and
dropping the dishes in the sink and coming in and
closing the door and just walking around and sitting down

(23:58):
right here and just saying, well, hey, babe, what's going on,
which is how I usually start all of their conversations.
And then pretty quickly I realized something was different. His mannerisms,
his facial expressions seemed different than the week before. And
I think the reason that I really recognized this was
my body reacted. First, my heart rates started to pounds.

(24:21):
I remember thinking that I could hear my pulse in
my ears, and I thought, I don't think my heart
sounds like this when I'm running, you know. And then
I felt like somebody took a cup of something warm
and like poured it on top of my head, like
it was running down my body. And I remember even
saying to myself, like kind of steadying myself at the
desk and saying to myself, Molly, don't faint. He was

(24:43):
looking around the room, eyes kind of darting in different places.
He seemed very nervous, which was nothing like the way
he had appeared the week before. And then he started
to ask me a series of questions that obviously spiked
my level of concern. He started asking if, then questions,

(25:04):
if I do this, what are you going to do?
They were terrifying, and I remember thinking, play dumb, and
so I remember saying, well, honey, I don't know what
I would do, but why would you do that? And
frantically I start thinking about what my options are because
in that moment, I just had this thought, and I

(25:26):
think the Lord gave it to me. It was he's
got a gun. And then I start I remember praying.
I remember saying, Lord, if there's anything separating you from me,
take it away, because if this is it, if I'm
going to die today in my office, you know, in
this tress skirt I don't like the day before I
turned forty, I want to know where I'm going. I
want to know I'm okay. I remember saying, take care

(25:47):
of my boys and help me be brave. I mean,
it was a thirty second prayer probably, And then I
start trying to focus on what he is saying to me,
and all the while I'm thinking about the teachers who
were right across the hall. I remember thinking about about
the number of students they had. I knew their backs
would be to the door, and for some reason in
my mind, I thought that's where he'll go first. There'll

(26:09):
be his first victims. And it dawns on me the
only thing standing between him and them is me, and
I remember thinking, you got to do everything you can,
like you got to do everything you can. So I
start really listening to what he's saying. He would go
back to rehash some of the things that he had

(26:30):
been so concerned about the week before. All the while
I am frantically trying to think about what I will
do if I can get this gun. Can I just
pull the trigger and unload it into the ceiling? I remember,
you know, but I remember looking up here and thinking,
we have a drop ceiling. It's a steel roof. This
building was built in nineteen seventy eight, and I had

(26:51):
read a lot. I knew what the trajectory of bullets
would do inside of a cinder block room, and I
remember thinking that that's not going to work. And I
had this thought, you're going to talk your way out
of this. And I remember thinking, you know, for a
kid who spent a whole lot of time in trouble
in elementary school because I just couldn't seem to stop talking,
yet had gotten a job where I talked all day,
it worked out great for me, right, And so I

(27:13):
just remember thinking, you don't have to talk yourway eye this.
At one point in the conversation, he unzips his jacket
and he sticked his he stuck his hand inside of it,
and I knew, I knew what it was. And he
started tapping on something. And I say this all the
time when I tell our story. Something rose up in
me and I remember thinking, not my school, not my school.

(27:36):
This will not happen here. This will not I will
kill you or you will kill me. But you're not
leaving that room. And I'll tell you I had never
thought about harming anybody. I mean, I'm a counselor what
we want to help people. That's not ingrained in our
in our DNA. But in that moment, if it was
going to be him or those kids, or him or
one of those staff members, or him or me, it

(28:00):
was going to be him. There was no way he
was going to leave this room. I didn't know what
I would have to do. I remember thinking at one point,
thank you Lord. You know you've had me training all
these months for a marathon that I'm supposed to run
in three weeks. I'm of the best physical shape of
my life. If this becomes physical, I think I have
a chance that when you started to tap on that box,

(28:20):
I remember thinking I had to take the bait, and
for some reason that made me furious, and so I
looked at him and I just said, slightly sarcastically, I said,
what are you tapping on? And I remember he kind
of cocked his head to one side and he was
like a pencil box. And I thought, no, it's not
I've never sent in an eighth grade with a pencil box.

(28:42):
But something again in me said, don't push Molly, and
so we just kept talking and then at one point
he looks at me and he says, Miss Hudgens, I've
got something to tell you that I bet nobody's ever
told you before. And I knew what he was going
to say, but I said, well, honey, I don't know.
I've been doing this job for a long time. My

(29:03):
doubt there's anything you can tell me I haven't heard before.
And he said, I bet nobody's ever told you they
had a loaded gun. And again, I said the first
thing that came into my head, and I think the
Lord gave me this. I said, well, no, honey, they haven't,
but you probably wouldn't be the first person to have
one here. And he unzipped his jacket the rest of
the way and he pulled out the gun. He laid
it right here on the desk in front of me,

(29:26):
with the base of the gun facing away from me.
I remember reading the word millennium upside down and backwards
and frantically trying to figure out I thought it was
a nine millimeter. Later we would learn that it was
a forty five. That only matters in terms of the
number of bullets the gun can hold, and I knew that.
Then he unzipped his jacket and he reached into the
outside pocket and he pulled out an additional magazine of ammunition,

(29:46):
and he stood it up right beside the gun on
my desk, and I start frantically trying to count the
bullets that you can vaguely see through the side of
the magazine. And then he pulls out a holster that
we would later learn he had used to attach the
additional magazine to his ankle. And so he lays all
these things on the desk in front of me, and
it strikes me, you know, I'm like a three foot target.

(30:09):
And so I remember standing up and leaning out, and
I put my hands on like on the gun, and
I said, honey, why don't we talk about what's going on,
and or why don't you want me take these and
then we can talk about what's going on? And he
yanked it all away. He shoved the magazine and the
holster back into his outer pocket where they had been
to begin with, and he held a gun in his
left hand, pointed down with the floor. And so I

(30:31):
am already like sort of halfway standing here because I've
leaned over to touch the gun. So I just stood
up the rest of the way and I put my
hands up, and all I start being flooded in my
mind with all these things I've learned. Is this a
hostage or a non hostage situation? You know, if it's
a hostage situation, the goal is to lower their expectations

(30:51):
until eventually the hostage taker realizes their best they're not
probably going to get what they want, and their best
option is to leave that situation. If it's a non
hostage situation, the person already has what they want and
you're not trying to lower expectations. You're trying to lower
their emotions. So I remember thinking to myself, You've got
a lower his emotion, Stay calm, let him feel as

(31:12):
if he has power. So I walk around the chair
that sits at the end of my desk, and I
got down on my knees and I think I heard that,
get on your knees, and I realize now, you know,
I was trying to put myself in a subservient position
because now I am physically lower than him, even in height.
And I remember hearing he's right handed. I knew he

(31:33):
had taken the gun out with his right hand, but
he now had it in his left. So I put
my left hand on his right shoulder, just like a
like to comfort him. And then I just reached over
with my right hand and I interlaced the fingers of
my right hand with his right hand, and I remember thinking, well,
if you're gonna shoot me, you're gonna have to do
it with your non a dominant hand. And I just

(31:55):
started talking. I couldn't believe this was happening. You know
you asked earlier about that. Did you ever think something
like this will happen? No? But at the same time,
I remember thinking a couple times, you're prepared for this
than anybody else in this building. I work with some
amazing educators who are very intellectual people, but I knew

(32:17):
that none of them had researched this study this, so
in my mind, I thought this was the perfect place
if he was going to come here. I tried to
start fully engaging him in conversation, and not too far
into that conversation, the worst case scenario happens when I
start to hear noises in the hallway and I realized
the kids are changing classes. I can hear the toilets

(32:38):
start to flush in the girl's restaurant right here behind me.
You can hear out in the hallway the locker doors
are slamming. The kids are talking there, yelling to each other.
And then I thought, get ready, because here come the teachers.
I could see them out of my peripheral vision, passing
the glass pane in my door. At one point Glenn
would come and stand there and look in, and I
wouldn't make eye contact with him because I was afraid

(33:00):
if I did, he would realize something was not right
and he would come in. He stood there for probably
I don't know, twenty seconds maybe, and then he left,
and later I asked him, I said, listen, I'm so
glad you didn't come in. You weren't supposed to, But
what kept you from that? And he said, well, Molly,
I looked in there, and you were down on your knees,

(33:20):
and I thought, well, lord, she's praying with him. She's
gonna be in trouble. But whatever. He came back to
his office.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
You don't getting any trouble in Tennessee, Yeah, Praig with me?

Speaker 2 (33:31):
I hope not. But I knew I had seven minutes.
Seven minutes they were going to be in the hallways,
and I tried to engage him as much in conversation
as I could. I did not want him to realize
how close in proximity he now was to victims or
potential victims. And so as the sound started to diminish
in the hallway, I remember feeling this sense of like,
their back in there, back in you know, they're back

(33:53):
in classes. And we talked some more. He realized that
he what he had done was already a felony. You know,
bringing a loaded firearm or any firearm on a school
campus is obviously against the law. He knew that he
he had all these concerns about things, but it dawned

(34:14):
on me that this was an even more critical situation
than I first realized. When he explained to me that
if he did not kill people here at school, that
someone was going to kill his family. And in that moment, I,
you know, I remember like almost inhaling sharply and thinking,

(34:35):
this is a psychosis. What you know, what you were,
what you were seeing on Friday that was concerning to you,
probably delusions, what you're seeing right now, hallucinations, like all
of that began to piece itself together. And that's when
I remember saying the prayer, Lord, help me, don't get
help me, do not get lost in this. And so
I started thinking, Okay, Molly, what would you actually do

(34:57):
if you really thought that there was, truly there was
a kid on campus whose family was in danger? What
would you do? And I thought you'd reach out to
law enforcement. And so I remember telling him, you know,
we've got to get someone to your home to protect
your family. And I remember this look on his face
that was like, she believes me. She believes me. So

(35:24):
I decided to work from that approach. I would love
to say that I had this beautiful strategy. In hindsight,
I think it was a beautiful strategy, but it was
not of my creation. I know that for sure. It
was like I played the best mental chess match of
my life and I don't even know how to play chess,
but I was working through everything that he would present.

(35:46):
We talked for a long time. It starts to dawn
on me that I cannot believe somebody has not come
into this office. Our teachers were fairly accustomed to understanding
that if the door to this office is closed, they
know not to come in. I'm either a meeting with
the student, I'm on the phone, or there's something going
on that I need a private setting. But I still

(36:07):
was worried. Kids were so us to turn in your
bed of fees that day. It was the last day,
and I kept thinking, somebody's going to come in. And
so I looked at him and I said, honey, listen,
I don't know what it is, but I know that
God's got a plan for your life. And He's stiffened
in his seat, and he looked down at me, and
I remember he said, Miss Hudgens, do you believe in God?

(36:30):
And I thought, oh, Molly, why did you say that.
It's like my heart just dropped into my stomach. And
then I just thought, well, if this is it, you know,
I thought about Peter, and I thought that this is it.
I'm not going to die denying the Lord. And I
was terrified, and I said again, first thing that came
to me. I said, well, honey, I do I do

(36:52):
believe in God, but I feel like you don't. You know,
is there a reason that you don't? And he said,
miss Hugeons, do you know how many times I've asked
for help and nobody's ever helped me? And I said, well,
what do you think this is? I said, you know,
maybe God wasn't telling you no. Maybe he was just
telling you to wait for today. And I said, listen,
I don't I don't know what we're going to do,

(37:14):
but I promise you two things. One I will not
leave you, and two what we're going to figure it out?
And he started asking me all these questions about God,
and I remember thinking how unusual that was, because of
separation in church of church and state that my faith
is not something I can go about and prophesy hear

(37:36):
at work, you know, but if kids ask you questions
about anything in a private study, you can certainly tell
them what you believe or what you feel. And so
I did my best to answer all of his questions,
feeling inept because I didn't know the answers to some
of them. But I remember in that moment just having

(37:58):
this thought, pray with him, what else do I have?
It was like the first time in my whole life
that I really really had to put my faith where
my fear was. And so I just looked at him
and I said, listen, I've got an idea. And I
don't know what you think about this, but how would

(38:19):
you feel if maybe we prayed about it? You know,
you've asked me a lot of questions about God. You know,
maybe we could just pray about it and ask for
some direction as to what we should do. And I
really thought that he would say, you know, I don't
I don't really want to do that, or I'm not
comfortable doing that. But he didn't. He said, I think
that would be okay. And there on my knees holding

(38:40):
the hand of this child.

Speaker 1 (38:42):
You've been on your knees holding his hand this entire time.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
Yeah, this is probably I would say, maybe forty five
fifty minutes in this would this what would last ninety
minutes before it would end? And so holding his hand,
I prayed the most heartfelt prayer of my life. The
whole time I prayed his eyes were closed. I kept

(39:06):
mine open because I was afraid not to. I was crying.
He was too. I remember thanking God for everything I
knew about him that I had learned, you know, the
Friday before, when I'd been listening and during the prayer,
I remember feeling like this pressure at my back. I

(39:28):
thought it was just because I had been in this
position on my knees for so long, But at that moment,
I just remember praying, Lord, if there is anything, that
there is any negative entity affecting this situation, remove it
from the equation. I felt like I was in a battle,

(39:50):
a spiritual battle, something I had never experienced before, and
I was scared. But I was going to fight, not
just for the kids, not just for the staff, not
even just for me, but for him. See what I
knew this whole time is that most people who commit

(40:12):
mass murder before they are homicidal, they are suicidal. Their
intention in most cases is to not survive their incident.
Many of them are hoping their lives will be taken
by law enforcement and they won't have to do it themselves.
But I did not want to lose him either, and
so at one point in the prayer, he raises the

(40:34):
gun up, and I am thinking that he's gonna shoot himself.
And I remember being terrified and just thinking, what are
you going to do, and then thinking are you just
You're just gonna sit here, Molly, You're just gonna watch
this happen, you know? Can you live with that? And
I knew I couldn't, And so I let go of
his shoulder and I reached out with my left hand

(40:55):
and I still, I don't still know what I was
gonna do. I guess I maybe was just going to
try to push the gun down. I don't know. But
he raised the gun all the way up over his
head and with his pointer fingers on the trigger, he
scratched the top of his head with his middle finger,
and I remember thinking that is not funny, but like,
at the same time, it was. It was like in

(41:16):
the middle of this, you know, I teach English, right,
the climax, the point of greatest emotion in height whatever,
It's like, God gave me this drop of humor just
to remind me, like you were still in this, you
are not alone. This is a good fight, and you're
in it. And so he raised, you know, lowered the gun,
and I remember when I finished the prayer. He seen calmer.

(41:38):
I had asked him several times through the course of
this about giving me the gun, and every time he
would say, Missagens, I want to give it to you,
but I just can't. And so the prayer ended, and
it was like this moment of just kind of what's next.
You know, we are sweating profusely. It's still sitting here.
If I really think about it, I can smell it,

(42:00):
like I'm just adrenaline and all that that's released in
a moment like this. And I had been praying, like, Lord,
I need some kind of opening. And I remember that
he looked and I had a medal hanging up on
the wall right up here that was from a five
K and he just said, I forgot that you like
to run. And we started talking about running, and I
just thought, here's your opening. And I said, I said, yea, honey.

(42:23):
I said, you know, I told you guys yesterday and
classroom guidance, I'm training for that marathon and I had
to run ten miles this morning. I said that, you know,
really rigs havoc on the knees. And he wanted me
to go back and sit at my desk he thought
I would be more comfortable, and I just said, I
can't do that. I can't leave where I am. I'm
going to stay right here, no matter how much my

(42:43):
knees hurt until you until you give me that gun.
And he said, well, I think maybe I want to
give it to you. And then I had this thought,
if he gives that weapon to me, then he's going
to feel like he's giving up his family. And so
I looked at him and I said, well, listen, why
don't you let me take it and then you don't

(43:05):
have to give it to me. And he said, okay,
I think that'd be okay, and he leaned over and
put the safety on, and I remember winging over him
and taking the gun, and I just put my arms
around there and we just hugged each other, me on
my knees and him in his chair, and I'm patting
him with one hand, and I remember telling him how

(43:26):
much I loved him, how proud of him I was.
I remember saying, you know, the right thing is never easy,
but it's still the right thing. And the whole time
I am holding what I now know is a fully
loaded gun, just because of the heaviness of it, and
we stayed like that for a long time. I remember
watching the clock. I still have it on the wall
back there. An elementary teacher told me one time, if

(43:48):
the kid ever hugs you, don't let go until they do.
And I'll tell you I do that with everybody. If
somebody hugs me, I never let go until they do.
They must need it, and so we stayed that way
for a long time. I remember during that just thinking,
just hold him like he's yours, Molly, just hold him
like he's yours. I had two boys, so I understood that.

(44:09):
And finally when he let go, I stood up. I remember,
like the blood my legs like ate horribly, like I
guess all the circulation, the blood running back through my legs,
and I remember thinking, though, you've never seen or read
about a school shooter who only has one weapon, and

(44:29):
so it was my assumption that there were more, and
so I said to him, why don't you give me
all of it? And I was hoping if there were
other weapons he would give me those as well, but
he gave me I already had the gun, and so
he gave me the magazine and the holster. I walked
back around my desk right here and in the corner.
I had two filing cabinets, and I wore the key

(44:50):
to one of them around my neck on my lanyard.
I still do, actually don't have the filing cabinet, but
I still have the key. And I remember going up
and unlocking the drawer and like pulling it out and
making a dent in my purse and thinking, I can't
believe I'm making a dent in my purse to put
a gun, but then putting in there and closing the
drawer and locking it, and like the key falling back

(45:12):
around my neck and literally thinking that's one way. And
so I walked back around and sat beside him because
there was another chair adjacent to his, and we just
started talking. We probably talked for fifteen more minutes. He
wanted to know what I was going to do. He
wanted to know what was going to happen to him.
I couldn't answer any of those questions, so I stayed

(45:33):
on the path that I had taken earlier with we
have to protect his family. And I said to him,
I said, honey, listen, I have got this friend who
works in law enforcements, and I think he can help us.
His name is Chris, And I said, wouldn't be okay
with you if I called him? And he said, yes, ma'am,
I think that would be okay. And so what he

(45:53):
didn't know was that Chris was the first name of
our student resource officer. At the time, we had one
SRO that covered four schools in our county, so we
only had three county wide. I knew there was only
a twenty five percent chance that Chris would be here,
but I called him, and I'll never forget when he
answered the phone because I was so relieved, and I said,

(46:15):
you know, hey, it's Mollie. Is there any chance that
you're at the middle school today? And he said, well,
I actually i am, but I'm in the conference room.
I'm meeting with some parents. Can I call you back
in a few minutes. And I said, well, this is
kind of urgent, but because the whole time, the child
is sitting across from me looking at me, and I
am terrified he is going to jump up and bolt

(46:37):
out the door. And so I said, yes, that'll be okay,
but if you'll just come down as quickly as you can.
And so as soon as we hung up the phone,
I realized that nothing in my voice. Nothing about the
words I'd chosen would have been any indicator to Chris
on the other end of the line that this was
an emergency, although I was hoping he would read into something.
And so I looked at the child and I said, Honey,

(46:59):
would it be okay with you if I sent a
text message to my husband to let him know that
Bradley has baseball practice after school today. That was our
oldest child. And he said, well yeah, And so I
sent a text message to Chris and it said I've
just taken a loaded gun off of a child in
my office. He doesn't know that I've contacted you. It's
locked in a drawer, Please come down quickly. And I

(47:22):
remember watching the screen fade to black and just hoping
it went through. You know, old building still roof allows
for terrible cell signal, And so I remember I even
got on our student management system and said, honey, do
you have any missing assignments? And he looked at me
like I've lost my mind? And I did. I printed
him off, went through everything the kid was missing in

(47:43):
language arts, math siens and social studies, just trying to
buy some time. And at the end of that he
said missagings. I think, I'm I think I'm just going
to go back to class, and I said, no, let me,
let me try one more time. So this time I
made the decision to call our assistant principle. I knew
that I could have a conversation on my end that

(48:04):
would make absolutely no sense on her end, and that
she would get somebody she would know. So thing was
not right. And so when I called her office, Chris,
the SRO answered her phone and I said, hey, it's Mollie.
I said, you know, I know you're working on something earlier.
Can you come on down now? And he said, well,
we've actually had to move into vice the vice principal's

(48:25):
office in order to review some bus footage from the incident.
And I can tell he's a little frustrated, because you know,
he is hard at work here trying to investigate a situation.
And I continue to interrupt, So I said, well, listen,
can you check your messages because I sent you an
email or a text or something. Can you see if
you got that. I'm having trouble getting those out today.

(48:47):
And he he looks at his phone and he says, Molly,
I don't I don't have anything from you, and then
he said, well, actually I just got a text message,
and he read the first line of it and he said,
I want you to stay on the phone as if
we're still having a conversation. And I'm on my way,
and I remember seeing him up here, at his face
coming through that glass pane, and just thinking, you're not alone,

(49:08):
which I hadn't been alone, you know, but now it
was like I had a person with me. And Chris
came in and conducted the most gracious and kind interview.
The child told him the same story he told me,
and then he looked at Chris and he said, I
went to Miss Hudgins because I thought she was the
only person that could talk me out of this. And

(49:31):
I remember thinking, if I live to be one hundred
years old, I will never get a compliment any greater
than that one. So I was allowed to stay with
him the whole time. I wanted to leave school with him,
but Chris said to me, Molly, your job is done,
and so I stayed. I wrote a statement for the
police Central Office came they wanted me to go home.

(49:53):
They felt like I should be able to take the
day off or take a couple of days and I
remember saying, well, who's going to do bus duty if
I'm not here? Like, just stay in the course, right,
And I did. I stayed all day, I did bus study,
I went to baseball practice. It was Wednesday night, and
I went to church and came back the next morning,
got up in around eight miles, slept like a baby,

(50:13):
got to hear the next morning, and remember thinking, I'm
so glad the flag is not at high staff. And
it wasn't until I got to my door and I
was kind of shaky, like trying to put the key
in that I remember saying, Oh, good grief, Molly, it's
in office going in. It would take me a while
to realize that most people who experience a traumatic event
don't normally return to the city of the crime. And

(50:35):
you know, work for seven or eight hours, and then
I wouldn't see him again for a month.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
We'll be back in a minute.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
On that Friday, after this happened, one of our eighth
graders came to me and said, Miss Hudgens, are y'all
gonna talk to us about this? Are we just going
to like sweeping under the rug and act like nothing happened?
And I went to the principles that I want to
talk to all the eighth grader So I put them
on our cafeteria. There were about two hundred of them,
and I remember standing on something I think it was
a chair, just so they could all see me. And

(51:22):
I remember saying, nobody knows what happened in my office
this week except for me and this other student, and
so I want to answer any questions you all have
because I want you to know the truth. They asked
questions for almost an hour. I would not tell them
who he was. I knew that over the course of
time they would probably figure out who he was based

(51:42):
on just who did not return to school from an
extended absence. But I remember saying to him, do you
guys remember the guidance lesson that we talked about on
Tuesday before this happened, And it was a lesson on
September eleventh. Our kids were not alive on September eleventh.
So there's a lesson called one Life Can Make a
Difference and it's about Wells Crowther, who lost his life

(52:04):
in the World Trade Center rescuing people. And so it
was a lesson on how anybody can do something to
help someone else. You just have to be willing and
available and recognize that need. And so I talked to
them about that, and I reminded them that one of
the takeaways they were supposed to get is that sometimes
there may be somebody who's struggling and they may not

(52:26):
know how to ask for help, or they may be
afraid or an embarrassed or ashamed to do that. And
I remember saying, that's where you have to stand in
the gap for them. You come and tell me, and
we'll figure out what to do. And then I remember
telling them sometimes that person may be you. You may
be the person who's struggling and you may think nobody
can help you. But if you come to me, we'll

(52:47):
figure out something. So I told him all said, you know,
he did on Wednesday exactly what I told you guys
to do. He was struggling, he was going through something,
he did not know what to do, and he came
to me for help. And I said, so here's what
we're going to do. We are going to protect him.
And I remember telling them they could talk to anybody

(53:07):
at school, at you know, the family, me, anybody on
our staff about what had happened. But I remember saying
we're not going to talk about this outside of our
school family, and you want to talk about miracles. Those
two under eighth graders never told his name, so it

(53:27):
was never published. The media never descended on his home,
his family never had to move. But I only got
to see him one more time. I got subpoenaed, and
I had prayed that I wouldn't. I did not want
any consequence he received to be connected to me. And

(53:49):
I got there for court and the judge saw me
and he said, I need to talk to you in
my chambers. And we went in and he said, Missugens,
I just went to a training in Memphis a month
ago and you presented. And I said, yes, Sir, I did.
And he said on school shooters. I said I know.

(54:11):
And he said I can't believe this, and I said
I can't either, and he said, well, we're going to
do something different. You're not going to testify. He said,
I'm going to bring in the prosecutor and the defense
attorney and I just very simply want you to tell
them what happened in your office that day. And I
guess I needed to tell it because I re enacted it.
I got down on my knees and held hands with

(54:32):
the prosecutor. And at the end of it, I remember
everything had changed, you know. She had come in like
a ready to prosecute, and he had come in ready
to defend, and all of a sudden it was different.
And I remember one of them said to me, what
do you think we should do? I said, I think
we should get help for him. He came to me

(54:55):
and he asked for help, and I promised him I
would see this through to the end. And I remember saying,
whatever we do is going to set a precedent, and
I would really love for our little town in the
middle of nowhere to get it right. And I knew
that if he went to jail, the course of his
life would be changed forever. And I wanted more than
anything for him to have a second chance. And I

(55:17):
believe if we could protect his identity, he could have that.
And they listened, and they made the decision that he
would go to an impatient mental health facility. I remember
asking the one ask I had that day is if
it was okay with him, if I could see him

(55:37):
or speak to him again, And he still had on
the same clothes he'd had on that day obviously when
he left here, he had worn other clothing at the
facility where he was kept, so it was a very
real same shirt, same pants, and he was handcuffed, and
he was shackled around his waist and he had shackles

(56:02):
around his ankles. So I remember like whispering to one
of the deputies. Is all of that necessary? And he
looked at me and he said, Molly, do you know
what he did? And I said, I guess I'll always
be a little too close to it. So he was

(56:24):
seated on a bench. Our courthouse is very old, and
it even has some benches that that probably came from
a church. They looked like a church pew. And I
remember he was seated and because of his hands, he
couldn't stand up on this without help. And so before
I even thought about it, I just got down on
my knees right in front of him, and I remember

(56:46):
holding his hands. And he never spoke. I don't, I
honestly don't think he could. But I looked at him
and I told him all the things I said in
my office, that I loved him, that I was proud

(57:07):
of him, and I reminded him that I was going
to be there until the end. I would see this
through the end. And I remember saying, I said, listen,
I don't know what that's going to look like. I
don't know how much I will be able to be involved,
but I promise you I will be here. And I

(57:27):
got up and I left, and I've never seen him again.
On the fourth anniversary, a lady calls me from our community.
She had worked at our school, so she knew who
the child was, but she and her family owned a
small business and she had no idea this was the
fourth anniversary of this incident. And she said to me,

(57:49):
Miss Huggens, She said, the young man who was involved
in the incident at school has applied for a job
at our business. And she said, we really try to
hire people who struggle. Maybe they don't have family, or
they just don't feel like they fit in. And she said,
I really feel like this would be a good place
for him, but we want to hire him if you

(58:12):
don't want me to. And I cried, and I said,
do you know what today is? Is the fourth anniversary?
And I said, and you're calling to ask me to
give him a job. Reference yes, hire him, Please hire him,
and she did. She did. I thought many times about
going to the business, you know, just like showing up.

(58:35):
I wanted to see him so much. I just wanted
to know that he was okay. I just wanted him
to know somebody still cared about him. But something in
me just said, don't push Molly. And so when our
book came out about our story, he found out from
someone about the book, and a person came to me

(58:58):
and said he would really like a copy that I
think I can get that to him, and I said, well,
I will give him one. And so I remember I
wrote in the cover everything I ever wanted to say
to him, and I remember I wrote in there, listen,
I don't know if you ever want to talk about
this again, so I'm not going to try to find you,
I promise, but I also want you to know that

(59:19):
if you ever want to talk about this for the
rest of your life, I will be here and you
know where to find me. And I really thought, I
think I really hoped that he would read that book
because the last chapter is all for him, and I

(59:42):
thought you would read it and then like send me
an email or reach out or something. But I had
to realize that the way I experienced his incident was
not the same way that he did, and I don't
know how he feels about it, and that's okay. I
wanted him to have a second chance, whatever that might

(01:00:03):
look like, and he got that, and there's a great
joy for me. And knowing that this September will have
been eight years and even though he has lived so
closely to me, I've never seen him again. And I
figure that one day, if it's God's will and in

(01:00:24):
his timing, that I'll run into him somewhere. It'll probably be,
you know, pumping gas or at a grocery store, and
I hope that when I do that, he'll know how
happy I am to see him, how grateful I am
that he's okay. I want to hug him. There's so
many things I want to say to him, and I

(01:00:45):
want to hear. Still, I still want to listen to
what he experienced and what he went through as he
as he healed. But if that is not meant to be.
If that is not the case, then I have accepted
that I did my part. I played the role I

(01:01:05):
was supposed to in his life, and tent with that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:11):
Well, this has been extraordinary. I have only one last
question for you, for what you did. You were awarded
the Citizen's Medal of Honor, and I'm just the nation's
highest award for courage, and I can you just tell
me what you think? What's your definition of courage.

Speaker 2 (01:01:35):
Courage is rising up and doing something when you don't
think that you can. It's standing in the gap when
you think that you're probably not enough. It's knowing that
you might lose everything but hoping that you won't. And

(01:01:56):
it's depending on a higher power to give you what
you need to finish the job you were prepared to do.
You see the Male of Honor recipients. I believe they
were all chosen. I think God chose each one of
them particularly for their incident. I don't think anybody else

(01:02:18):
in history could have performed the acts of heroisdom and
bravery that they did on the day that they did,
in the way that they did. Many of them are
great men of faith, and their stories are what led
me to start to feel as if I could share
my story. And with the Citizen's Honors, we have a

(01:02:42):
multitude of recipients who are posthumous recipients who lost their
lives in schools and I wear a bracelet every single
day that has all their names on it, just to
remind me that they were not gifted a ninety minute intervention.
You know, they went directly towards an attacker in their

(01:03:05):
schools and they lost their lives doing it. And so
when I share story, I feel as if I represent them.
I know that I don't will never feel like I
fit in a category with any of the citizen or
the military recipients. But I know that as long as
I'm alive, I can tell their stories and I can

(01:03:25):
remind people of their heroism. And when you look at
the Malavana recipients and you look at the faith that
they shared, I can't help but think about Gary Biker,
who went back to school after Vietnam after he received
the medal and got a master's degree in counseling and
became a school counselor in Greece, New York for thirty

(01:03:46):
four years. You know, they prepared me for how to
go forward in this life, knowing that while some people
would perceive what I did as heroism, other people would
think I just got lucky. I always say I didn't
get lucky, I got rescued. And there's a big difference.

Speaker 1 (01:04:09):
Where's the metal.

Speaker 2 (01:04:11):
It's right here. I knew you might want to see it.
So with the military recipients, with the citations that are
written for the Medal of Honor, they all say that
they have gone above and beyond the call of duty,
which is why that's here. But the engraving that is
on this is the same engraving that's on the sarcophagus
of the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And the reason
they did that was to marry the idea that heroism

(01:04:33):
is not just a military concept, it's something that happens
every day to people across the country. Yeah, and of
course if I tilt the computer just slightly, you all
can see there's You know, I've been given more accolades
and things than I could ever you know, have in
a lifetime, but they're nothing compared to just the opportunity
to still be here, you know, and get to tell

(01:04:55):
the story and share it with people. And so thank
you for this opportunity. Not at all I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:05:02):
Well, this has been fantastic. Have a lovely day. Hug
those boys from me.

Speaker 2 (01:05:06):
I will I will.

Speaker 1 (01:05:27):
Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Constanza Galardo, and Izzy Carter.
The show is edited by Ben Nadaf Haffrey, Sound design
and additional music by Jake Gorski, recording engineering by Nita Lawrence,
fact checking by Arthur Gombert's, original music by Eric Phillips.

(01:05:50):
If you want to learn more about our Medal of
Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be
sharing photos and videos of the heroes featured on the show.
We'd also love to hear from you dm us with
a story about a courageous veteran in your life. If
you don't know a veteran, we would love to hear
a story of how courage was contagious in your own life.

(01:06:12):
You can find us at Pushkin Bonds. I'm your host,
Malcolm Glampa.