I was shooting commercials for a client in Columbia, Missouri, April 17. My director C.B. Lorch of Charlie Bravo Pictures is also a lead stringer for national television networks. In the middle of our videotaping he was contacted by FOX, asking if he was available to cover an active shooter event at Florida State University. We took a moment to process that message, and then stopped our taping to see what we could learn about the unfolding tragedy. At that moment we all felt very far away from home.

Later that afternoon I drove the 125 miles from Columbia to St. Louis to join my wife, Berneice. My work coincided perfectly with Easter weekend and the opportunity for us to visit family and attend our 11-year-old grandson Luke’s baseball game.

I used the drive to catch up on the news and try to digest the unfolding of the unimaginable.

It was a beautiful mid-western night. A slight breeze as the sun was getting lower in the mid-western sky. Far from the pain. A perfect moment to feel incredibly lucky. Luke had no idea something terrible had happened 798 miles away. He was just a kid playing baseball on a beautiful spring evening. He was safe, but being safe never entered his mind. His only worry was getting a hit.

I was sitting next to Berneice as she was working to coordinate how the United Way could assist, watching her juggle the conflicting events. Berneice leads our United Way of the Big Bend and far too often they are called upon in times of extraordinary need.

As I watched her talking with community leaders and agencies, the dichotomy was palpable; Leaving her seat to have another of a dozen seat-leaving phone conversations and then sitting back down to try and refocus on a field full of happy kids…choking back what was happening back home…and then her phone would ring again.

And in that moment I thought to myself thank God our children don’t need to worry about accidentally reading Maya Angelou, because our visionary state leaders made certain her poetry wouldn’t clutter our school libraries. And that our kids were safe from finding themselves in a bathroom with the wrong gender. Taking comfort that because we have our priorities straight, we have protected our kids from those things that can bring them such harm.

Proud that our national leaders saved a few million dollars by gutting the Department of Education and getting rid of those pesky mental health programs. Sleeping well knowing our state leadership has made sure allowing the open carry of guns is high on their list of priorities, and the visionary lowering of the age to buy a weapon was making its way into law.

Knowing all that wrapped me in an itchy blanket of anger. The kind of itchy that we’re powerless to scratch, because we have leaders who find the blanket cozy. And then as events unfolded, I took a deep breath, and thought about two good men who didn’t get to come home, because they went to a campus to do their jobs.

I wondered if our children will ever look back and realize how we’ve failed them. Failed to minimize risk. Failed to allow tragedy to give birth to change instead of simply providing another podium moment of hollow thoughts and prayers.

From far away, I saw pictures of those leaders rushing to the cameras to show their concern and remind us that they have made certain no one would burst into our children’s schools and read them a dangerous Maya Angelou poem ever again.

Gary Yordon is a host of the political WCTV program "The Usual Suspects" and president of The Zachary Group. You can find his podcast, "Banana Peel Boulevard" at thepeelpodcast.com or on the Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify platforms.

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