When My Father Was Shot, America Came Together

Almost immediately after my father and three other men were shot in March, 1981, I felt it—a drifting away of politics, of differences, a softening, a remembrance that we are all human beings winding our way through this life juggling our weaknesses and strengths.  

None of us deserve to be ripped apart by bullets. I felt this in Washington D.C. after my siblings and I arrived in the dead of night and were taken early in the  morning to the hospital where my father—pale and shaken, but alive—tried to put on a brave face. I felt it when I returned to Los Angeles. Everywhere I went, it was as if the country had softened into grief, shock, a remembrance that politics is not as important as humanity. We didn’t know if my father would live. There were complications and setbacks that were mostly kept quiet. But our grief was mirrored in what we felt around us. It was as if a cloak had been wrapped around us. 

America was there for us. There were other tears besides ours.

Yesterday, after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, I hoped for something like that. But instead, there were accusations and angry outbursts. A verbal fight erupted on the House floor after a moment of silent prayer was called for. Elizabeth Warren angrily blamed President Trump’s rhetoric, and President Trump angrily blamed those on the left.

I thought about Charlie Kirk’s family, and how they don’t have that feeling of a giant cloak wrapped around them—the feeling of a country willing to suspend politics and ideological differences to just be human and weep. That’s when we tap into the better angels of our nature and remember how to be achingly, heartbreakingly human.

I don’t know how we end our pattern of violence and shootings without that. 

My memories of those chilly March days so long ago when my father was shot are memories of fear and confusion, of desperate prayers that he would recover, and horror at what was done to James Brady, who would never fully recover. One man, one gun, and a nightmare was unleashed. 

But my memories are also of a country that exhaled, backed away from politics, and opened up its collective arms in solidarity with our pain. I wish Charlie Kirk’s family could know that. I don’t know how we get it back, and I don’t know who we are without it.