When death came knocking

Tom Fox won't win any prizes – well, perhaps he will – for the video he shot of yesterday's incident at the federal courthouse in downtown Dallas. It's raw and confusing and shaky – and very, very real.

It demonstrates, as well as anything can, what it feels like and sounds like to be caught in the “vortex of breaking news.” That's a phrase from one of my college journalism classes – and it conveys well the swirling, chaotic, sensory overload that assault those seized in its grip.

Tom Fox, dispatched by his editors at The Dallas Morning News to the courthouse on a routine photo assignment, found himself swept into the center of that vortex yesterday. He reacted as all journalists hope they would – as I hope I would have when I carried a reporter’s notebook – with calm nerves, clear-eyed professionalism and, yes, with courage.

When you look at the photo below – for which Tom, deservedly, will be remembered for the rest of his career – you see the results of how he reacted when death came knocking and he became part of the news, not just a recorder of it.

The photo, taken as he crouched along a curb, is sharp as a knife’s edge and masterfully framed. It even has a touch of artistry about it – probably luck but luck Tom earned. Along the right edge of the photo, the gunman’s face is reflected in a glass door. It’s a perfect photograph. Perfection and horror all wrapped together forever.

He had less than a second to take it.

Tom did not seek out the fame he is enjoying today. He was just a newspaper photographer on assignment. Confronting crisis, he responded with instinct, skill and grit – qualities that have made him one of the best in the business, even before the events of yesterday. He could do nothing less.

When I hear political opportunists and their mindless supporters call talented and dedicated journalists like Tom Fox “enemies of the American people,” traitors who produce nothing but Fake News, it makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me want to break furniture.

Tom Fox and his colleagues at The News and at newspapers, TV news rooms and online news operations everywhere aren’t our enemies. Far from it.

Under increasingly difficult conditions, they struggle every day, sometimes at great risk, to keep us all well-informed and safe. They are essential to our democracy and to our collective welfare. God only knows what we would do without them. Pray God we will never have to find out.

 Great work, Tom Fox, yesterday and every day. I’m proud to be able to call you my friend.

Preparing for the moment when she says, ‘I do’

The Gunnels clan sailed into unfamiliar waters this week, and frankly, the voyage has made me a little seasick.

My daughter, apple of my eye and song of my heart, is getting married.

She and her intended, Paul the Chosen, just returned from California, where they went, presumably, to celebrate the end of a rugged academic year for Rachel, a superb high school English teacher adjusting to a new school.

In probably the worst-kept secret in history, they actually chose southern California as the appropriate locale for Paul to officially bend the knee and ask Rachel to marry him.

Frankly, the issue was never in doubt. They’ve known each other since college, have stuck together through first jobs and other calamities and, just a few months ago, moved in together.

They’ve been shopping for rings for months, and Rachel finally selected one she liked a few weeks ago, setting in motion the byzantine machinery of wedding planning. This week’s proposal simply seals a deal that’s already been negotiated.

If my battered and bruised father’s heart didn’t feel so pummeled, I might be able to appreciate the beautiful inevitability of it all. As it is, I’m hanging on for dear life.

Let the record show that I didn’t cry. At least not yet. The tears will come, I’m sure, when the bills for the upcoming nuptials start arriving. Until then, my only responsibility in this affair is to stay out of the way while mother and prospective bride attend to the complicated and unfathomable logistics of a wedding.

Discussions have been underway for some time. What date works best, what are the venue options, what kind of flowers, what about the bridesmaid trip (the what?), etc., etc. These conversations frequently take place in the presence of Paul the Chosen, who listens quietly with the same look of doom that the gazelle has at the approach of the cheetah.

I feel for the guy, but I can’t save him. No one can. He’s on a zipline ride he doesn’t control, and his best option is to hang on and enjoy the adrenaline rush – if he can.

Paul’s a great guy, but he has always been a little stiff around Marice and me. He’s generally a laid-back fellow, I’m told, but he’s always rigidly correct, scrupulously polite and circumspect when he’s around us. Rachel explained it to me once.

“He’s a little afraid of you,” she said.

“Good,” I replied.

Paul is a decent, generous and compassionate man, though, and he adores Rachel. So what have I got to complain about? Ignore me while I sit over here and glower.

A while back, Marice and I, Rachel and Paul attended a crawfish boil at a Grapevine brewery. When Rachel got up to get more beers, Paul shifted uncomfortably in his chair and said he wanted to ask us a question.

Rachel had alerted us what to expect so we turned to him and waited.

“I, uh, I want to ask Rachel to marry me, and I’d like to have your blessing,” he said with what may have been a gulp.

In my mind, I bellowed “Hell, no” and punched him in the face. What I actually did was put my arm around his shoulders.

“Paul, that’s very sweet of you to care about what Marice and I think about all this,” I said with practiced conviction. “But the only person whose opinion really counts in all this is Rachel. And I think you know how she feels. Welcome to the family.”

And that, as they say, was that.

If I sound like I have it all together about this seminal event, I do – up to a point.

That point arrived a couple of weeks ago when I was rearranging some wall hangings in Rachel’s old room. (Let’s face it, it’ll always be Rachel’s Room to me, even though Charlotte, our West Highland terrier, has claimed it for her own.)

Poking around under the bed, I came across a framed illustrated page from a vintage children’s book that had hung in Rachel’s room when she was a little girl. I held it in my hands and struggled to breathe as scenes of Rachel’s life with us played in my head.

Rachel in a red velvet party dress tottering around a Christmas tree during a holiday party long ago, the tree lights casting a cheery glow on her chubby face.

Rachel sitting in the middle of her room, surrounded by two dozen Barbie dolls while she carefully gave one after another a “haircut.”

Rachel clutching clarinet in gloved hands at Dragon Stadium as the Southlake Carroll High Marching Band struck up “Hey, Baby,” the traditional signal that Dragon victory is nigh.

Rachel beaming as she proudly displayed a small potted plant her students gave her on the last day of her first year of teaching.

The room itself has reminders of Rachel everywhere – framed collages of photos from her band years, ADPi keepsakes from the sorority house, a bookcase full of teen fiction and celebrity bios. (She took the more serious stuff when she moved out.)

So the framed illustration doesn’t seem all that out of place where I hung it in Rachel’s Room. And maybe someday I’ll be able to look at it without the dull pain of loss pressing my chest.

As for the wedding, the first decision is when it’ll take place. That seems easy enough to an uncomplicated soul like me. But I’ve come to learn that myriad factors go into setting a date – a process so complex and difficult that it makes quantum physics sound like a Dr. Seuss rhyme. Marice, wedding planner extraordinaire, will oversee the process. They’d all best listen to her. She is, after all, a Mother of Dragons.

I won’t be consulted, thank God. I have the hardest job of all – figuring out how to pay for this shindig.