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A breeze rustles through the pecan-tree grove as Dale Haas leans back in a wrought-iron chair on his back patio. A rooster crows, strutting from around the metal barn. Wide open acreage surrounds the modest brick home for miles. The solitude of the farm in Caraway allows Haas a protective sanctuary where he home-schools his 14-year-old son and teaches him the moral lessons that come with good, hard work. It’s difficult, Haas says, to see his wife off each morning as she treks the 28 miles to Jonesboro. She’s a schoolteacher. Haas retired eight years ago after a dozen years as the county judge for Craighead County. Before that, he was the county’s sheriff. Pain flashes across his face. He lifts his foot up and flicks a spot of dirt off the sole of his tennis shoe. It’s been 20 years since Haas stood before a mass of media at Westside Middle School, 2 miles on the outskirts of Jonesboro, and cried as he confirmed that four students and a teacher had been shot to death and 10 others wounded on the school’s playground. He hasn’t spoken about it publicly since, until now. “It just kind of makes you sick at the pit of your stomach that it keeps happening,” Haas says. “I don’t see it stopping anytime soon. I think the moral compass of the country needs to be reset.” Haas grimaces and doubles over in his chair. He doesn’t want to talk about it, he says. But once the gate is open, the words flow out quickly and unchecked. “I’ve always relied heavily on my Christian beliefs, and I do believe that’s what gave me the strength to get through the day of the Westside shooting,” he says. “It has bothered me ever since, and I’m sure it will haunt me the rest of my life. Just thinking about it, it makes you sick thinking of … how unnecessary. Just how unnecessary. What point did it prove? Why was it so senseless? So senseless.”  |