The Summer We All Grew Up

“Go! Go! Go!” I screamed at my younger brother Ken, as I shoved him towards the bright sunlight of the open door, with many hands grasping and pulling at my clothes!  

My three sisters, Julie, Joni, and Lisa were trapped behind me, my body blocking the aisle. Ken was only a couple of feet from the wide open door with only one obstacle left.  

Linda the bus driver lunged at him with her large robust body, but Ken was scrappy. He squeezed past her meaty grasp and was out and running for it.  

It had become a Bus 9 tradition for the Goff children to race the hundred yards up the front lawn from the school bus to the house.  Boys on the bus helped us brothers and girls helped my sisters.  

Initially it started as just something the five of us did. Then kids started joining in by hampering our egress from the bus. At first the stern Linda frowned upon this activity, but due to Ken and my constant wins, she joined in on the girls’ team and evened up the odds.   

The memories from the Bus 9 rides to and from Cleveland Elementary and West Side Junior High Schools are some of the most poignant memories of my childhood. Magical times.  

There was fun music, kids singing 99 bottles of coke (beer) on the wall, as well as a made up song about bus driver Linda. The sounds of laughter and giggling permeated Bus 9. (I can still sing the Linda song, word for word, to this day.)

Entering into September of 1981, was a joyous time of merriment. We students had been back in school less than a month. The fresh excitement of seeing old friends had not worn off.  

Not to mention summer was waning and with fall came Halloween, then Christmas! The two most sacred and fundamental foundations of childhood in America.  

I had turned 12 in June. Ken was 11. Julie and Joni were 13. My little sister Lisa was 9. Life just felt right with all the gang there on Bus 9 that year. 

The memories are as clear to me as yesterday. My best friend Duane. My good buddy Kyle. The Walters girls. (I “crushed” on the older Nicki until I moved away in the 8th grade.) Her little sister, Mindy, plus Dallas and Becky were Lisa’s friends.  

Those four were an interesting crew. Dallas had red hair, Mindy had black hair, Becky had dirty blond hair, and Lisa had brown hair.  The four young girls were always giggling and laughing. Four colorful peas in a pod.  

Some of the other staple friends were the gaggle of Bailey kids, who also had six children in their household. (Our sixth was my sister, Diane, who was 16 and in High School.) 

Friends of my siblings were Mike Baylor, grade-school famous because he was a hemophiliac, Charlena Taska, Scott Sergeant, Terry Monroe, Scott Bennett, and little Becky’s older brother, Chris. 

Like I said, a perfect magical time in the lives of a busload of Indiana school kids who were all friends. It seemed like it would last forever. It didn’t.

September 14, 1981, changed everything. Little blonde Becky didn’t get on the bus that fateful Monday morning. Her brother said she was sick.  

I knew of death. It was a thing that adults whispered about in dark corners and then hushed up real quick when we kids came around. At this point in my life I had not experienced the loss of a family member or anyone close. In my childhood mind, death seemed like a far away shelved concept, like China. 

When we returned home, the neighborhood was buzzing. We knew it had to do with the dozen police cars at Chris and Becky’s house. 

The adults were gathered at the ends of various driveways whispering with stern sick looks on their faces. My mom was actually pale. It scared us kids. China was now on the shelf by itself. Death had come to visit our neighborhood that morning.  

Mom sat us down and told us Rebecca Hope Green’s mother, Joan, had killed her in their home before school and had fled on her bicycle. There was a manhunt underway.  

It was later passed through the neighborhood grapevine that Becky’s mom had wanted her to stay home from school that day to help her. Becky didn’t want to miss school and when she went to leave her mother grabbed her hard by the hand and broke her finger.  

There had been “home checks” done on the parents prior to this and Joan panicked, thinking the authorities were going to get her for child abuse. She grabbed an iron skillet and bludgeoned her ten-year-old daughter to death. 

After killing her daughter, Joan Green changed her clothes, packed a suitcase, and rode her bike to the bus station. The police arrested her a few days later at a friend’s house in Chicago.  

Joan was deemed to be aware of right from wrong and was found Guilty But Insane and sentenced to sixty years prison. The courts later bumped her sentence down to fifty years. I heard she served twenty-five and was paroled in 2006.  

My friend Becky cannot be paroled. She's still serving her sentence in the ground. Several online court documents state Joan has never shown remorse during any of the proceedings.  

My step-father decided it would be good for all of us children to attend the viewing of our dead friend, although we had never seen a deceased person before. Not only did my parents take us, but they paraded us trembling and horrified children up to the open casket.  

Years later we found out the crime scene photos were so brutal that one of the jurors vomited and nearly caused a mistrial. 

The horror of what I saw in that death box still haunts me to this day. Her broken finger was still bruised, crooked, and dark purple even with the attempted make-up coverup. The funeral home had worked miracles on her head, yet it was still slightly elongated and bruised.  

I had nightmares about Becky sitting up in her coffin and turning to look at me. This went on late into my teens. It still upsets me to think and write about it.  

The day after the tragedy was tough. Adults didn’t seem to know much about childhood traumatic experience and we children found ourselves back on Bus 9 the day after the slaying.

It hadn’t escaped anyone on the bus that our friend Becky was getting her head bashed in while we drove by singing and giggling just the day before. When we drove past the Green house, bus driver Linda burst into tears.  

There was no giggling, laughter, or singing on Bus 9 for a long time after that. No more gender-infused team races up the front lawn. It no longer seemed important. Those are the things we lost when we lost our dear little friend, Becky.  

This September it will be 42 years since her death. Becky would have been 52. A life never lived. Graduation, marriage, children, and the fanciful dreams of youth; all stolen in one moment of unimaginable rage and fury. 

It surprised me to tear up when I saw her photo after all these years. (Okay, it also happened a few times while I was writing this.) The thought of Becky being in the Osceola Cemetery all these years, perpetually ten-years-old, really hit me. 

I wrote about this because it still haunts me that her life ended with a twenty word obituary and I don’t want Rebecca Hope Green to be forgotten.  

While researching the trial, I discovered other students from Bus 9 have been posting comments about Becky on memorial sites throughout the years. I guess I’m not the only one who grew up during that awful 1981 Indiana summer.