Matt and his father.
Credit: Matt Westmoreland
My phone vibrated inside my pants pocket...It was my dad. I didn’t pick up, but he left me a message I’ll never forget.
|
|
By Matt Westmoreland
The morning that Brian Nichols went on a shooting spree at the Fulton County Courthouse, I was sitting in my government class. My phone vibrated inside my pants pocket. I saw the call was coming from home, which was unusual since it was mid-morning and both my parents work. It was my dad. I didn’t pick up, but he left me a message I’ll never forget.
“When you hear a judge has been shot,” my dad muttered in his message, “know that it’s not me.” My dad didn’t go to work that day – he was at home with my mom watching the news coverage.
We were all shocked. My dad and Judge Rowland Barnes were two of 19 Superior Court judges on the same court, in the same building, who attended monthly meetings together in the same chambers. I couldn’t help thinking if the circumstances were just changed a little, the national news media could be reporting about my dad. Two years ago, the last time a Fulton County Superior Court judge was shot, it was the result of a personal, estranged relationship. But this was different. This wasn’t a personal feud. It was a random act of violence.
While I was busy imagining what could have happened to my dad and thinking about my younger siblings who didn’t know the news, a panic went through my school as teachers were ordered to lock their doors and not let any students out. For the next two hours my school was on lockdown. Nobody left the building. No one knew what was going on. Teachers knew very little and what they did know, they weren’t sharing with us.
While my classmates were online for hours trying to get information, I was on the phone with my dad. I’d call him at home to check in. He was amazingly calm. I’m sure he was shaken, but I don’t think he was going to share that with me or my siblings. We haven’t talked about what would happen if either of my parents died. It’s never come up. It almost feels like we’re less inclined to talk about it now because of the seriousness of what happened. Maybe it will come up in the middle of a family vacation, I don’t know. For now, it would make a horrible situation even scarier.
March 11th will always be an eerie reminder of the dangers my dad and other public officials face as they try their hardest to carry out the law and keep people safe. But I’d never want my dad to give up being a judge. He loves his job.
|
