Hi All -- This is an interesting feature from Sunday's Berkshire Eagle written in the first person by a reporter whose high school class was visited by a lot of misfortune. I'd be interested to hear what people think of it.
--Mary
So much HOPE, so much TRAGEDY
The Wahconah Regional Class of 2000 began its journey with great expectations. But how it turned out is anything but inspiring.
By Jenn Smith, Berkshire Eagle StaffBerkshire Eagle
Sunday, April 01
The first death came a month after we graduated.
It was mid-July of 2000, and I had moved to Cape Cod to live with my great-grandmother for the summer. I wanted to work and save money for my freshman year of college in the fall.
Graduate from high school. Go to college. Get an education. Find a job. Leave the homeland.
Life was just beginning for me and for others in the Wahconah Regional High School Class of 2000.
I was sitting on my living-room floor reading The Cape Cod Times with my breakfast tea when I saw it:
Jeffrey C. Johnson, 18 ... died ... graduated ... Wahconah ... June ...
He had transferred to Wahconah from the Cape town of Sandwich during our sophomore year. He was perpetually the new kid, transferring back and forth. He struggled with teachers and friendships but worked hard and graduated.
Nearly seven years later, I read on his death certificate that he had committed suicide by overdosing on drugs and alcohol.
At my great-grandmother's on that July 2000 day, I slumped back against the base of the couch.
"This is my classmate," I thought. I then corrected myself: "This was my classmate."
We are Wahconah Warriors, but nothing taught in the classroom could prepare us for this kind of devastating news.
Reality is cruel.
Four years later came two more deaths from the Class of 2000: Justin M. Farrell, who died in a car accident, and David C. Sullivan, who was fatally shot by a former Wahconah student.
My classmates made headlines again in 2006 with two murder convictions and life sentencings: Bryan R. Johnston in the Sullivan death, and Damien J. Lamb in the death of Pittsfield resident Brandon LaBonte.
In just six years, our legacy as a great-expectations class of the new millennium had become marred by three deaths and two murder convictions.
Alfred T. Ingham, a criminologist and professor at Western New England College in Springfield, said it's difficult to say what led to this concentrated number of incidents.
"No one ever kept track of stuff like this," he said. "This might be one heck of a coincidence. There might not be any logical explanation."
The headlines were inescapable. They linger not only in the shadows of the minds of classmates, but in the minds of families, friends and faculty members.
"People will always go, "You went to Wahconah. Oh, you're the class that ...," said classmate Lori Mullett, a former softball player who works as a manager at Best Buy at the Berkshire Mall.
Mullett and I are among the 161 graduates of the Wahconah Class of 2000. Most of us are simply trying to carry on.
But understanding how we got here requires looking at where we came from.
'Symbolic ambassadors'
In September 1988, the members of the high school graduating class of 2000 — more than 3 million strong — entered first grades across the United States.
Even at that age, we already were in the news.
"These children are the future high school graduates of the Class of 2000, and as such, have been targeted to become the symbolic ambassadors for a smoke-free society," Arlene Evans wrote in a 1988 article for Pediatrics for Parents regarding a campaign announced that year by the U.S. surgeon general.
"You guys started the century off," said Thomas J. Callahan, the Wahconah principal in 2000. "By being the first class, you do have expectations."
We may have bought the grammar-school hype, but by the time we reached high school in September 1996, many of us were smoking, and the millennial significance of our class was an afterthought.
"I never thought it was that big of a deal. I think it was more of what people expected out of us," said classmate and former cheerleader Cassie (Jordan) Burke of Claremont, N.H., who is applying to beauty school this spring.
In 1996, CBS News began a four-year study of members of the Class of 2000 across the country.
The network spoke with more than 2,300 students who were part of this demographic, and in the summer of 2000 produced an e-book titled "The Class of 2000: A Definitive Survey of the New Generation."
The study noted how our class grew up enjoying a booming economy but also lived through a presidential sex scandal and impeachment; the dawn of a new century and fears of a Y2K technology crash; the rise of the Internet; and a wave of school violence, including the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.
"The Class of 2000 is a generation that has been marked by hardship ... often feeling they had prematurely become adults," wrote Carolyn Mackler, an author of the study. "After all, having sex means you can wind up with AIDS, attending school means you can get shot, and just saying no to drugs can mean being shunned."
Adolescent struggles
As with any high school student, members of the Wahconah Class of 2000 were preoccupied with hormones, home life and homework — all of which made life inside the school's walls challenging and chaotic.
"Like countless other adolescents, high school was a very hard time for me," said classmate Phoebe Clune, now a Northeastern University student and a payroll administrator for Boston's New England Aquarium.
Classmate Mike Swail and others noted the "bad parts" and "the drama," but many of us turned to our families for support and guidance.
"The fact that I had a good family life also made it easier to enjoy high school," said Swail, a mechanical engineer for Sensata Technologies in Attleboro. "I can completely understand that those of us who had a tough family life probably had a tough high school experience."
When asked whether we were a close or outstanding class, answers ranged from "strong" to "clique-y" to "not tight at all."
"It was not a class that moved together," said Terry Elwood, a former Wahconah foreign-languages teacher and a parent of a student in the class.
Former class president Seth Karpinski, now a high school physics teacher at Hackley School in Tarrytown, N.Y., said the class had struggles amid other classes.
"I felt like we were a bit in the shadows," he said.
Several classmates agreed, saying we didn't have the same caliber of strong athletes, academics and artists as our predecessors.
"No one really stood out," said Bridget Martin, who finished a master's program last summer in medieval studies at the University of Connecticut.
She also said that being in a spread-out school district added to the struggle. Seven small towns feed into Wahconah, along with school-choice students from the region.
"There was no place where we all met except school," Martin said.
We felt isolated, but we had our moments to shine.
Amy Welch, an assistant bakery manager at the Hannaford Supermarket in East Greenbush, N.Y., recalled an intimate memory about late classmate Jeffrey Johnson:
"I did not know Jeff, and he didn't know me," she said. "At the senior banquet, during the last song, I was doing my shy-loner thing sitting by myself, and Jeff asked me to dance with him. Totally out of nowhere. So I danced with him. He was very sweet. He asked me what my name was and told me I looked nice. He made me feel good about myself.
"I wish I had gotten to know him better. Every time I hear that Aerosmith song ("I Don't Want to Miss a Thing"), I think of him. It was only a month or so later when I heard he died. I realized we weren't kids anymore."
'Looking to get out'
For a while after Jeff's death, things seemed quiet. For the most part, my class went one of three ways: college, the workforce, the military.
"I think we were all looking to get out," said Jeff Fox, now a financial auditor in Providence, R.I.
We tried to move on, to grow up.
Instead of meeting at Friendly's for ice cream, we met over a couple of beers at Jacob's Restaurant or The Dalton Depot.
We grew older; some of us grew wiser.
Some grew closer and stronger; some of us grew distant.
Four years after Wahconah, many of us found ourselves upon college graduation.
A chance to start anew.
Then it happened again.
In May 2004, classmate Justin Farrell, a former member of the Wahconah cross-country, ski and tennis teams, was killed when the sport utility vehicle he was driving collided with a tractor-trailer on Route 9 in Windsor.
He was 22.
"It was awful," said Laura Hess, a friend of Farrell's and a nursing student at the University of Colorado at Denver.
"The drama never ends; it just gets more serious," said classmate Stephanie Sinclair, a merchandise supervisor at Manhattan's Banana Republic. "We're grown-ups now, and it's scary as hell."
Seven months later, the class and the region were dealt a shocking blow that involved two classmates.
On Dec. 7, 2004, near the Amherst campus of the University of Massachusetts, Bryan Johnston fatally shot David Sullivan with a high-powered assault rifle in Sullivan's apartment.
"When they tell you the worst thing that could happen in life is to lose a child, they're right," said Daniel C. Sullivan, David's father. "There is no closure to be found."
The fact that Johnston was the son of a well-known Wahconah science teacher, Bruce Johnston, made the situation more painful.
The incident permeated not only through two families and a group of friends, but through a class, a school, a town.
"In a close-knit community like Dalton, that affects everyone," said Dalton Town Manager Kenneth Walto, a parent of a Class of 2000 member. "No one's just a bystander."
In August of 2005, the Wahconah wounds were reopened when Rolling Stone magazine ran a story titled "The Loser" by Peter Wilkinson.
The article detailed the lives of Johnston and Sullivan, depicting Johnston as "a spoiled, indolent rager" and Sullivan as "the popular boy, the football star."
"The Loser," which included yearbook photos of the boys as well as a layout full of blood-spattered pull quotes, ran as a six-page spread at the heart of the magazine.
Class members called it "reactionary" and "biased" and said it included a lot of "labeling."
"If this happened to two urban kids in New York City, you wouldn't see it in the magazine," Lori Mullett said.
"It gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach, and still does to this day," said Nick DiSantis, a friend of the two young men.
Throughout Johnston's trial, it was constantly argued that his actions were due to drug use and mental illness.
"This just goes to show you what drugs can do, and it really hit home this time," DiSantis said. "Being from the Berkshires, not much is going on around here, and I believe drugs are one of the biggest problems this area has."
Wilkinson told The Eagle that the murder contained elements of the school shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.
"With Johnston, there was a clear pattern of erratic, violent behavior involving guns over a period of years," Wilkinson said. "I got the sense his friends covered for him, and by the time anybody stepped in, it was too late."
Johnston was sentenced to life without parole. Less than six months later, in October 2006, former classmate Damien Lamb was found guilty of murder in the 2005 disappearance of Pittsfield resident Brandon LaBonte.
According to accounts, Lamb, a martial-arts expert, had handcuffed LaBonte, strangled him with a rope, and then beat him to death in connection with a $150 debt that LaBonte owed Lamb.
Though Lamb didn't graduate from Wahconah in 2000, he took classes with us through our senior year. For that he is considered by many to be a part of the class.
Cry for help?
I remember Damien at his best in a middle-school Spanish class. We were class partners. He had long hair and wore tie-dyed T-shirts. He was quiet but easy to joke with.
One day in class we were studying beach-related vocabulary. The textbook illustration included a man in the middle of the ocean shouting "Socorro!" — "Help!"
We would joke about it and say socorro when we got homework or were walking through the halls at school. It became a way of getting one another's attention.
Even in later years, when he worked as a security guard at the Berkshire Mall, he would shout it to me from across the food court.
During his trial, Lamb was described as a "tough guy" who exerted control over his friends and associates. But other classmates said they never saw it in his character.
"I will never forget the day I was watching TV, and there was Damien Lamb standing in the courthouse being charged for killing someone," Cassie Burke said. "He was supposed to be my daughter's godfather. I think that was the one that hit home."
Even today, I can't help but wonder if Lamb's socorro became a greater cry for help.
Visit with an inmate
On March 20, the day before my 25th birthday, I drove to the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, the current home of Johnston and Lamb.
It's a maximum-security prison, and the two are just a cell floor apart.
In response to letters I sent them, both men said last month that they are appealing their murder convictions. Though Johnston said he could not speak with The Eagle because of his appeal, Lamb agreed to.
When Damien and I met, he shook my hand, and we both smiled. It felt like any high school reunion — friendly and awkward.
I asked him what he thought of high school and our class.
"When you're here, you have nothing to do but think," he said. "I think about our class a lot and wonder what happened to them."
Though inmates are allowed to leave their cells for only three hours a day, Lamb said he sees Johnston a lot. Even though Lamb said they weren't good friends in high school, they still talk.
"When I saw him in here, even though I knew what happened with him and Dave (Sullivan), it was like, it's still Bryan. We were in the same class and we went through school together," Lamb said. "There's still some respect."
We're in this together.
The tragedies in the Wahconah Class of 2000 affected each of us, even if we weren't good friends with the people involved, even if we weren't a close class.
A few other classmates, including Wes Horth, now an electrical engineer in Boston, wonder if things would have been different if we had spent more time together.
"We didn't hang out as a class. It would've been nice to have the memories," he said.
On graduation day, Seth Karpinski, our class president, urged us to "remember where we came from and encourage our small-town values, no matter where life takes us."
"When I said that, I didn't know the magnitude of the phrase," he said. "I can't stress that enough now."
As a high school teacher, Karpinski said he sees just how easily social fibers can weaken, but notices how just a smile or a kind hello can make a difference.
"It doesn't happen very often when you're in high school that you acknowledge the person across the class as someone in the same boat as you," he said. "As I get older I see how valuable it is ... to recognize the people around you as people."
But stepping away from ourselves, many of us realize this chain of events could happen to any class, in any high school, in any town.
"I feel that people involved in these unspeakable 'tragedies' were not victims of a bad high school, or the astrological significance of the millennium. They simply lost what made them live lovingly," said classmate Brian Kulas, now a sales associate for Barnes & Noble in Pittsfield. "I think with the Year 2000, lots changed in the world, and we were on the cusp of that."
Being on the brink of change brings a mixture of excitement and expectation — whether it be a new year, a new child, or a new career.
Lamb made a point during our conversation: "The bigger the setup, the harder the fall," he said. "Overall, there are a lot of good people in our class. But such (high) expectations were unrealistic."
When we graduated, the world was open to us.
Seven years later, for some of us, it is closed — in prison cells and in caskets.
But for the rest of us, the millennium moves on.
» The breakdown
Three deaths and two murder convictions have hit the Class of 2000 at Wahconah Regional High School in Dalton:
July 2000: Jeffrey C. Johnson, 18, dies at home in Hinsdale a month after graduating. According to his death certificate, he committed suicide by ingesting and overdosing on drugs and alcohol.
May 2004: Justin M. Farrell, 22, dies in a crash in Windsor after his sport utility vehicle collided with a tractor-trailer. The truck driver sued and won a settlement in November 2006 of more than $300,000 from the "estate of the deceased."
December 2004: David C. Sullivan, 22, dies of gunshot wounds allegedly inflicted by close friend and former classmate Bryan R. Johnston. The shooting occurred near the University of Massachusetts campus in Amherst.
April 2006: Johnston, 24, is convicted of first-degree murder in the Sullivan death and is sentenced to life without parole, the maximum sentence under state law. Johnston also is found guilty of armed burglary, use of a firearm in the commission of a felony, and possession of a large-capacity firearm in connection with the death. Johnston is serving his life sentence at a maximum-security facility at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley.
October 2006: Damien J. Lamb, 24, is found guilty of second-degree murder for slaying 21-year-old Brandon LaBonte in Becket in 2005. LaBonte's body was never found. Lamb is serving a life sentence — with a chance of parole after 15 years of incarceration — in the same state prison as Johnston.
March 2007: Johnston sends a letter to The Eagle stating that he is appealing his murder conviction. Lamb says during a face-to-face interview that he is appealing his conviction.
Source Eagle files
