Michael Jackson's gift in a time of crisis - with Charles White

Charles White was a student at Cleveland Elementary College in Stockton in 1989 when the school came under attack by a man with a gun, killing 5 students and wounding over 30 more. The story is mentioned on page 39 of my book “Humanitarian – The Real Michael Jackson.”
 3 weeks after the shooting, Michael Jackson visited the school to support the students and teachers and to inspire the kids to go back to school. Charles was also there on the day Michael visited and, in this episode, he tells us all about it.
 Just a warning that some people may find some of the subjects discussed in this interview upsetting.


Cleveland School Remembers/Brady works to reduce violence and to bring about awareness of the impact of gun violence on the community. CSR/Brady is working with local and national groups to facilitate a reduction in violence.

Show your support: https://clevelandschoolremembers.org/ 

Buy the book “Humanitarian – The Real Michael Jackson” HERE

Connect with the HumanitarianMJ Facebook HERE

Connect with the HumanitarianMJ Instagram HERE

Connect with the HumanitarianMJ Twitter HERE

Connect with Paul Dwyer’s Instagram HERE

Connect with Paul Dwyer’s Twitter HERE

office use only eKZDL5dwFFd8AUs2RDzW

Transcript

Michael Jackson's gift in a time of crisis

Paul:

How are you doing?

Charles:

Doing fine. Thank you for asking

Paul:

No problems at all. Thank you so much for chatting with me. I know it's a bit weird getting a message from some rando over the other side of the world saying, would you like to chat about something that happened 33 years ago? But I really do appreciate it. So to give you a bit of a backstory, I wrote a book in Thousand and 18 called Humanitarian the Real Michael Jackson. It just basically goes through all the hospitals and orphanages that he visited and all the kids he helped over his career. And it's quite an extensive book, something that's not heard a lot about Michael Jackson. So I was a fan in the just became a passion to share those stories. And this year the book's getting turned into a podcast. So I'm trying to track down people that might have some stories, and I found your name in a Facebook group and thought you might have an interesting story to tell us. So I suppose I'll start by saying thank you for joining, thank you for having the chat with me. Tell us a little bit about yourself and Stockton and what it was like growing up there in the 80s.

Charles:

So, for myself, growing up in Stockton, California, I lived in the neighborhood near Cleveland Elementary School and actually attended quite a few different elementary schools there. But Cleveland was one of my first ones. It was actually kindergarten, first grade there. So it was one of my earliest memories of my childhood and growing up in Stockton around my friends and neighbors. And so, unfortunately, with that event that happened in Stockton was one of the first major school shootings, school massacres in the United States prior to Columbine. Really making history on the map, if you will, for tragedy. So for me, being such a young age, such an impressionable age of five and a half, six years old, is really nerve wracking, to say the least, or traumatizing for a lot of us. So just going to Cleveland elementary, it's just like you would hear in several other stories. You never would expect it. I know Stockton doesn't exactly get the best rap for being a peaceful city, but Stockton itself has some really great people there. And so that event really shook the community down to its core when it happened initially.

Paul:

How old are you now?

Charles:

I am 39. About to be 40 in July.

Paul:

Okie dokie. So in 1989, you would have been six, did you say?

Charles:

Yeah, just about six. Yeah, like five and a half, pushing six. So, interesting enough, the memories from that event is still very vivid, still very clear. Can remember it just like it was yesterday as far as what had happened, and just reminiscing with some fellow classmates. Some folks of mine on Facebook have mutual friends that actually attended the school as well. We didn't know each other at the time, but they had attended the school as well. One was my exact age, and the other one was in 6th grade as well. And so we found a way to communicate and chat and talk a little bit about the events and how it affected us as individuals and growing up as adults and how we kind of perceived our lives and how that molded us into adulthood.

Paul:

Yeah, 100%. So in 1989, does that mean you were in the first or second grade?

Charles:

Actually, because of where my birthday falls in July, I was actually in kindergarten. Yeah, my kindergarten class was right on the edge of the school grounds right there as the shooter had come in. Mine was the very first classroom that he was walking into to approach. I actually have a fairly interesting story about my morning there prior to so typically, because I did live really close to the school, my mom and I would go there every morning and we would stop by McDonald's or she would make some breakfast on the go, and we would go and sit at the bench at the school. And so we would sit at that bench right in front of the playground, right next to my class. So the kindergarten section and kindergarten and first grade section was kind of sectioned off from the rest of the larger classes or the older classes. So we kind of had our own corridor. And so to make a long story short, we would go there every morning and we would sit at the bench and have breakfast. And the morning of the shooting, we were actually running late to school, and she had to go to the DMV to take care of her registration for her car for the Department of Motor Vehicles. And so we were standing in line for a good hour at the Stockton DMV. And at that point in time, there was no major social media and nothing had broke out on the news yet. And so when we had arrived, the shooting had just taken place, and so we were trying to get around to the school. My mom was a nurse at the time, and so we were actually trying to get to the school, and she drove around on the backside where the shooter had set his car on fire, and he was actually out being pursued by the police department at that point in time. And so as a nurse, she ran out and told me to stay in the car, and she went out to go treat some of the kids that were out and were injured and shot on the playground. So for me, it was very vivid day just being involved in that, because in hindsight, had we been there that morning just sitting on that bench, that was exactly the spot that he had walked in and entered the school campus. So we would have been the very first ones he saw as he approached the campus. So, needless to say, I don't think I'd be sitting here having this conversation with you had that not happened.

Paul:

Wow, that gives me chills. Yeah, it still gives me chills. So for people that are listening, can you tell us, in your words, what happened on that day, January 17, 1989, that has put Cleveland elementary on the map?

Charles:

So that day when when the shooting happened, the, you know, the shooter came onto the campus and opened, fired, and killed five students, wounded dozens of students, and killed a teacher as well. And I think he also wounded another teacher. The shooter. His name was Patrick Purdy. He was actually a former student of Cleveland elementary and had a strong hatred towards Laoshan and Cambodian children in the Stockton community. Obviously someone who suffered from a lot of mental health problems, schizophrenia, things of that nature, and decided to take it upon himself to go back onto the campus and seek out revenge against those minorities on the playground and came on campus with an AK 47 assault rifle and shot multiple children at point blank range and then proceeded to flee from the police as they were pursuing him and wound up taking his own life as well in the process. Afterwards.

Paul:

And so you told me that you've rocked up to school and this is all happening. You sort of got there right in the middle of it. How did you find out that this is what's going on? How did that become apparent?

Charles:

We got there, and as we were approaching the school, there were ambulances everywhere. There were cop cars everywhere. My mom wasn't too sure what exactly was going on. There was so much chaos going on at that moment, because going back and looking at it, this was one of the first major school shooting events that had happened in the United States. So there was really no protocol for first responders and police officers. There wasn't a lot of formalized training on how to combat an active shooter, let alone on a campus. There had been, like, bank robberies in the town and things like that, but no one had ever prepared any of our first responders or any of our city officials to combat that type of behavior. So it was really challenging, I think, for the city and for the parents and the students there. Like I said, it completely shook the entire core of Stockton down to its bare bones, if you will. So it was very much an impactful event that not only affected the city, but affected the entire United States. Like I said, it was one of the first shootings here in the United States, and there really was never a plan for it.

Paul:

Yeah, I do want to take a minute and just actually mention the names of the five kids, because I think it's important those names are remembered and are spoken about, not forgotten. So their names were and correct me if I'm wrong, if you know any better. 

Rathanar Or, age 9

Ram Chun, age 6 

Sokhim An, age 6

Oeun Lim, age 8

Thuy Tran, age 6

I just wanted to mention their names because I think it's important that those names are not forgotten. And what a horrible, traumatic day for everybody involved, the kids, the teachers, the parents. Did you go back to school the next day?

Charles:

So they had canceled school, obviously, that day for what had happened, and there was actually a few days where they had school canceled as the officials were doing the crime scene walks and so that the entire school was taped off. I'm trying to remember back as far as when we returned back. I believe we went back about two days later, and surprisingly, at this point in time had gotten a lot of media attention. The news cameras were out full strength, if you will, going up and down the neighborhoods, knocking on doors. And there's actually a small clip of me on our local news station, KCRA, Channel Three, where they came out and interviewed both my parents the day that I was getting ready to go back to school. Really emotional time for the students and the families. We were going back. And so we were very fearful. We didn't know what to expect from our school. We didn't know what support was going to be there for us. And so a lot of parents elected to not have their kids go back to school. But I myself really enjoyed going to school and being around my friends, and I really wanted to be there for my friends, especially because one of my good friends was actually shot and injured in the leg. And so he was going through his own challenge, getting hospitalized, and his brother was trying to be there for him and go back to school. So it was a very challenging time for all of us, especially at such a young age.

Paul:

Yeah. And was there support for you when you got back in?

Charles:

So initially there really wasn't. The school had set up counseling sessions with counselors just the first couple of days there where they were talking a little bit about, do you feel safe? Just real generalized questions. But talking with my parents and going back as far as the aftermath of it, it gets a little bit more blurry as it goes further past that event. But I do remember that the parents were encouraged to seek outside counseling for the students that had the PTSD, things of that nature from the event. So I do remember I did attend some form of counseling with a therapist for a couple of sessions and just talking a little bit about what happened and how I felt and really just seeing what I think they're really just trying to get a baseline of how it affected me from a mental standpoint. But I do know that there was a lot of frustration at that point in time for the school not really having an extensive type of therapy, nothing from what we would see today from an emotional support standpoint, of course.

Paul:

Wow, okay. And then so fast forward a couple of weeks and first of all, were you a Michael Jackson fan back then?

Charles:

Huge Michael Jackson fan back then.

Paul:

Really? Before he visited? I suppose everybody was, weren't they? He was the biggest thing in the world.

Charles:

Right.

Paul:

So then he comes to town and I think some kids were told that to expect a special guest coming to the school. Did you hear anything in advance?

Charles:

We did. We heard that there was a special guest coming to school. We didn't actually hear until the morning of that he was coming. I know he had, I guess, notified or had his camp notify the school district that he was coming in fairly quickly, fairly quietly, and somehow, some way, the media found a way to find out that he was on his way to the school. So it was really a huge media frenzy when he did get there. But I know the morning of, I actually remember listening and getting ready for breakfast and hearing man in the Mirror on the radio. And just ironically, that always resonates with me when I think about the morning that he had arrived to the school.

Paul:

Wow, amazing. So tell me about that. How was the visit?

Charles:

So the visit was highly anticipated because when we got there, they told us Michael Jackson is here. And we just were kind of just five, six year olds. We were just in complete awe. I mean, Michael was bigger, larger than life, or even adults. So from that perspective, we were all just on pins and needles and just waiting for him to show up. We heard he started on the other side of the school first, so he was seeing the 6th graders, if you will, and so we had to kind of wait our turn as kindergartners for him to show up in the classroom. Yeah, so we were in the middle of story time, kindergartners we're in the middle of story time and the teachers sitting in the middle of the classroom and they had kind of brought in both the kindergarten classes together. So we were all just in one big classroom. And so we're listening to the story being told and we're looking to the door, waiting, and we're looking because there's security everywhere at this point in time. And then at that point in time, finally the teacher turns around and the security lets her know he's coming in. And so she stands up and brings him in and he comes in and says hello to the class and how you guys doing? And to me it was really fast because I think he really wasn't trying to make a big deal out of it. He really just wanted to check in on the kids and make sure that we were okay and wanted to be there for us as the humanitarian that he was. So I remember him telling us, I'm sorry you had to go through this, but I know this doesn't help, but I want you guys to have a gift for me. And he had given us all eight by ten frames of his Bad album, and he had signed all of those. And so every student in the school got a copy of his Bad album with his signature on there as a gift from him to us.

Paul:

Wow. And you mentioned that there was security all over the place. Was that his entourage? Did he bring a massive entourage, or was it just a couple of people with him?

Charles:

Yeah, it just seemed more of hired security that was just designed to keep him safe. It didn't really seem like he had at least in my eyes, it didn't seem like he had a huge entourage with him. I believe he had come in via helicopter, from what I understand, and so I'm not too sure how many people he actually had from his camp with him.

Paul:

Have you still got that Bad album?

Charles:

I do. My dad actually has it. It's up in our storage, and he's over in Nebraska right now, but I've actually hit him up for that to see if I could get a picture of it for our session. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get that, but I remember it was yesterday, it was in this hot pink writing and total eighty s, and it was in the leather jean jacket with the Bad album cover. That was the world to me. I had to hang it up in my room. And from that point on, I was just instantly even more of a Michael fan. Just all of his work he did throughout the years and just really appreciated what he did because he didn't have to he was the biggest star on the planet at that point in time, and he didn't have to come out to Little Stockton and see us kids, but he did. That kind of set his heart.

Paul:

Yeah, 100%. And I've heard that he also visited a nearby church where there was kids. I think I heard they were having lessons there because they were too scared to go back to school. And also a hospital where some of the injured were. Did you hear about that?

Charles:

Yeah, I did hear about that. I know there is a church that actually sits right adjacent to Cleveland Elementary School over off El Dorado Avenue in Stockton. So it also has a school there as well. So I know he had gone over there and tried to do a visit as well. And then the hospital is St. Joseph's Hospital that all the students were taken to and treated at. And that's actually interesting enough. That was the hospital I was born at.

It was pretty special. And they were actually their burial sites. Where the children were buried was the cemetery right next to St. Joseph's Hospital where they had the services for all the students there. Like I said, the city had jumped in to help out with all the services. And the school district, it was really a community effort to recognize these fallen children that had to pay the ultimate sacrifice just for being children, unfortunately, due to that situation.

Paul:

Yeah, it's horrible. What effect I know it's a hard question, but what effect do you think Michael's visit had on the kids and the teachers and the community?

Charles:

I think for that time in place and moment, it really made everything go away because he was just so, like I said, so much larger than life that it really gave us a spark of hope. His music was always extremely inspirational and just whenever you put it on, you can resonate whether you're in a good mood or a bad mood. It sits with you and it impacts you. So for him to visit like that and really offer that autograph for all of us kids, it didn't change the fact that that situation had happened, but it sure made it a lot easier to swallow and kind of get out of reality for at least a few seconds. For us in that aspect, I do appreciate what he did, and that still sets with me to this day.

Paul:

Excellent. And I know some of the teachers created a group called Clevelandschoolremembers.org, where they're lobbying for tighter gun laws and gun reform and the government to look at their gun laws. And I don't know if you know about Australia, but in Australia in 1996, we had a mass shooting in Port Arthur in Tasmania, where 35 were killed, and I think it was about 25 injured. And the government banned guns from that day forward. In 96, they offered cash incentives for people to hand in their guns. And obviously you can still get them for sporting or hunting police or security, but they have to go through very strict stringent tests, mental health checks, criminal checks, and make sure they're people of good character with a good reason to access them. Are tighter gun laws something you would like to see in America.

Charles:

In that perspective? I hunted as well with my dad. I was a hunter, and so I didn't necessarily hunt at that age, but I was learning to. And so I would always tag along with him to go hunting. And I was taught at a very early age of respecting a weapon and understanding the dynamics of what it can do and always treating the gun with respect and never pointing it towards anyone, things like that. But to talk to a little bit to your point, I think that the nation and California, I think, is doing a good job as far as kind of leading the pack and reform. But the nation itself definitely needs to take a look at what we're doing to continue to protect our citizens here and protecting our kids. Most importantly, I definitely think that more stringent background checks need to be done for people, just because California, in particular, during the Reagan administration, really, when he was in office as president, really did away with mental health facilities. And so there is a huge crisis in California with mental health and across the nation as well, even with homelessness. I mean, it's just it's it's it's running rampant. And so in respect to that, not to go too far down the rabbit hole, but if we are going to continue to allow weapons and people to own weapons and exercise that Second Amendment, we need to make sure that the people that are getting the guns in their hands are in their right state of mind, and they are being evaluated and looked at. I mean, I think Australia having that psychological evaluation is a huge piece right there. I think that would eliminate a lot of unnecessary events where people who might be on the edge could not have guns in their hands. I think there needs to be some type of baseline mental health status for you to be able to own a gun.

Paul:

Yeah, 100%. I know just looking from the outside, from over here, breaks our hearts to see the shootings that go on in America, I think, on a daily basis now. It's horrible to watch. So hopefully something does get done about it. And I just said mental health is a big part of that. So if that can be looked at, that'd be awesome. Is there anything that you wanted to add about the visit, about Stockton, about yourself?

Charles:

I just think that whole scenario kind of going back to when we first opened up the conversation, it really helped mold me to the person that I am, even speaking with some of my classmates. And I'm happy to share after this interview some of their information if you'd like to gather some more insight from a different perspective. But one of my friends went on to become a police officer for Stockton PD and used that sole event as his motivation to try to help keep the streets clean and protect our youth. And he still advocates for gun control and for active shooter drills and things like that. Just really much of a humanitarian himself. I myself got down in the criminal justice field and worked in probation and rehabilitation to help change lives. I worked for the better part of about six and a half, seven years with at risk youth 14 to 18, and really try to help change lives for the better. So I think that event, everyone who came out of that event came out changed. We came out stronger, we came out more knowledgeable about situations that can happen, and that no one's an exception to the rules of tragedy and just studying criminal justice, I learned very early in my careers that crime doesn't have an address and it doesn't discriminate. It can happen anywhere at any time. So I've moved on into healthcare now, and so I'm a healthcare administrator for skilled nursing, and so now I teach my team and my nurses to be on the lookout. And it's sad that you would think in a healthcare setting that something like that would happen, but it has happened. And so there's really no venue anymore that's safe from tragedy. So just going back to that piece, as far as people being changed, I definitely think we all, at some point in time, took that scar that we had, whether it was physical scar or an emotional scar, and we took that with us, and it helped to make us who we are today. So not that we want to go through that, but we definitely learned from it.

Paul:

Yeah. Well done. And well done on the work you're doing. That's awesome.

Charles:

Thank you.

Paul:

To be making a difference and to doing something positive, and for a positive to come out of such a negative, that's an amazing thing. So thank you. Thank you again for having the chat. I'll let you keep going with your Friday night.

Charles:

Really appreciate it.

Paul:

Go and hit the clubs. Do whatever you do on a Friday night. I really appreciate your time. So thanks again and have a great one.

Charles:

You do the same, Paul. Thank you.

Paul:

Thanks, Charles.