Oneonta High School - Tomahawk Yearbook (Oneonta, AL)

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STORY OF THE YEAR ASSASSIK] The biggest news story of 1981 was assassination — the attempts on the lives of the U.S. President and the Pope and the murder of Anwar Sadat. On March 30 Ronald Reagan was struck by a would-be assassin ' s bullet a split second before Associated Press photographer Ron Edmonds took this picture of the President outside Wash- ington ' s Hilton Hotel. Six weeks later a second gunman shot Pope John Paul II as the pontiff was holding a mass audi- ence in St. Peter ' s Square. And the world ' s sense of shock and indignation was compounded in October when fa- natic f uslim machine gunners slaugh- tered Egypt ' s Anwar Sadat and seven others as they watched a military pa- rade in Cairo. None of the last dec- ade ' s bombings, kidnappings, hijack- ings and murders by nihilistic political activists made terrorism seem more commonplace, inescapable — and frightening — than these attacks on heads of state and church. (The diffi- culty of protecting public figures was further dramatized by a London exhibi- tionist who in June fired six blank shots at Queen Elizabeth to show how easily he could have killed her.) The attempts on the lives of the President and the Pope seemed chillingly inane. Rea- gan ' s attacker — the son of prosper- ous, churchgoining parents — hoped to impress a young motion picture ac- tress he had become smitten with from afar. The Turkish criminal who shot the Pope announced, with mudd led satis- faction, that he had struck a blow at the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Sadat ' s death, for millions, was the most dis- heartening event of all. His murderers were revealed as anti-Westernization rebels, activists in a movement that seethes in the Arab world. REAGAN ,«i. PRESIDENT REAGAN WAS shot an instant before ttiis picture was taken but l e did not realize he was wounded until ttie mustached Secret Service man (left) and the agent at his shoulder had shoved him into his car and ordered it driven hurriedly beyond range of the gunman ' s .22 pistol. 32 Student Life

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«l I J Charles Philip Arthur George Who could forget the royal wedding of the century? Surely not those Americans who awak- ened to the sound of trumpets at 4 a.m. (| I J Ronald Wilson Reagan In Washington, too. a distant era was evoked. A new President rode to power tall in the limou- sine, surrounded by his old Hollywood buddies, and the nation ' s best and richest mounted a reassuring display of opulence I don ' t think the Ayatollah Khomeini would understand this at all That was Gov Robert D. Orr of Indiana, wel- coming home embassy hostage Frederick Krupke. and of course he was right. America, the Great Satan. tormented almost beyond en- durance for 444 days, responded by draping itself with yellow ribbon and cheering itself from the steps of every town hall in the land 1 ■||L. g H W ' M F !Zr . ' Xm H ' HHjt [J H F J hi- ' ' - ' ' i«H H f ' ' l t L I H b WELCOME B CK TO FREEDOM r