Winning?

As parents of four children, three of whom graduates of West Wendover High, we have come to know many local teachers.

Almost without exception they have shared two things in common they like to teach and they like kids.

They really like kids.

Yes we know that almost has to come with the job but it is still staggering to us that they can like a stranger’s kid when sometimes we were not that thrilled with our own.

And after over 25 years of watching local teachers we still find it incomprehensible how they go to work every day  enthusiastic about kids.

They don’t like just the smart kids or the good kids, the rich kids or the poor kids. They like all the kids and more importantly they love to teach.

These are people who take it as a personal challenge to teach to every kid in their classes. And seeing them work is inspiring.

Knowing what we do about our local teachers we were astounded by the antipathy all of them held for Kody Patten.

After weeks of interviews the nicest thing we can print is “little puke”.

We have sworn at our own kids and there are some kids in town we probably would not like. But we aren’t teachers. Even when we have written stories about current and former students who committed some serious crimes we have found that our teachers are remarkably tight lipped about them even off the record.

Except for Kody Patten who is universally reviled.

Of course feelings are affected by 20/20 hindsight but the depth of their revulsion suggests Patten was despised long before he murdered Mickie Costanzo, much longer.

Now it doesn’t take much for us to dislike someone even a kid. But for the cadre of Wendover educators most of whom take a failing student as a personal short coming, it is astounding.

Yes by now we have heard again and again the list of Kody Patten’s misdeeds while a student. Still we are astounded and knowing our teachers as we do we can come up with only one conclusion: Kody Patten is an evil puke.

And we wonder about just what the heck his father was trying to prove by keeping his son in school?

By the time he became a senior probably long before that it must have been clear that Kody was never going to graduate and the very best he could do was to take up space while interfering with the education of other students. That was the best Kip Patten could expect. The worst as horrific as it is actually happened.

Parents do have a responsibility to protect their children but they also have a duty to protect everyone else’s children.

As for Toni Fratto’s parents all we can think of is what were you thinking?

While all the adults in this tragedy are probably not criminally liable for the taking of the life a beautiful innocent young girl, they certainly made it a whole lot easier.

If they feel ever lasting shame for their involvement, it won’t be long enough.