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What is included in your legacy from the 70’s decade?

On May 21, 1976 a school bus jumped an exit ramp on I-680 in the San Francisco Bay Area.  Landing on its back, wheels up, the roof of the bus crumpled.  Tramped inside were 61 members of the Yuba City High School Choir.  27 students died that day, along with their choir director.  9 suffered serious injury.

That year the Rector was a freshman at Yuba City High School.  His mother had encouraged he and his brother to join the High School Choir.  Her interest was a well-rounded education for her twin boys that included an appreciation for choral music.  Their interest was football, girls, and doing their best to look cool in the eyes of their peers.

The interests of mother and sons diverged at the prospect of joining the Yuba City High School choir.  After a significant amount of discussion during the week of High School registration, mother and sons agreed on a compromise. 

The first semester the Rector and his brother would join the choir.  If they liked it, they would register for it again the second semester.  If they didn’t like it, the Rector could sign up for Construction Tech – a class that would prepare him for life as a journeyman carpenter.   His brother could sign up for Heavy Equipment Operation, where he could dig deep holes with a backhoe, and learn to load a dump truck with a frontloader. 

The boys endured first semester Choir.  They actually enjoyed it; but not enough to sign up for a second semester.  The result was this:  On May 21, 1976 instead of lying dead or injured in the wreck of a school bus below the off ramp of a super highway, the Rector was calculating how much concrete to order for the theoretical foundation of a house that would never be built and his brother was learning more than he ever wanted to know about the dynamics of hydraulic fluid.

The news of the bus accident raced across the school and across the nation.  National media outlets sent reporters to the High School to interview students and teachers.  Ted Koppel filed a story on the accident. 

Everyone had a friend who died too young.  Churches across town held memorial services for weeks.  Every service was packed.  Every preacher, minister and priest addressed the same irresolvable question, with the same unsatisfactory answers. 

One simple lesson rises up from May 21, 1976.  Life is precious.  Life is short.  Life sometimes hurts. 

Why invest one’s life in pettiness? 

Why pour out one’s life in resentment or bitterness for even one brief minute? 

Why allow fear of any kind to strip one of the opportunity to embrace each day as a gift to be lived to the full?

School buses sometimes jump off-ramps on super highways.  It has happened before.  It will happen again.  This limits in no way the power of divine love to heal and restore the most broken of hearts.

Share the love.