Wade McGilvra's Biography

 Authors first hand account of the May 7th 1981 Oregon Museum Tavern shooting.

On May 7, 1981, at 10:25 pm at the Oregon Museum Tavern, a gunman entered and opened fire on the patrons. At the end of his thirty second spree, three were dead, twenty wounded and a fourth died on the way to the hospital. The city of Salem and everyone whom was in the building that night including the first responders to arrive on the scene, Were forever changed.  What their eyes have seen, time cannot simply erase.  Salem statesman news.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Letting go of someone you love is never easy, Expectations exist even though we all know we are going to lose someone close to us someday.Is it that we cling to childhood tales of a perfect world where everyone lives happily ever after? Then perhaps this is why we are so rarely prepared for death, Let alone the Murder of a loved one.So how does one witness it, live through it as a survivor and somehow move on with the life you’ve been spared and believe that everything will be ok.How do you begin to process the guilt of survivorship. And how in the hell does one process the guilt of knowing that your loved one whom is now gone, was there in it that place at that exact moment, because of you.I know now that people were just trying to be nice and really didn’t know what to say in a time like this. As they themselves were struggling, trying to find the words to convey some form of comfort to a friend and family member.It’ll be ok Wade, was the common phrase I would hear time and time again as the weeks turned to months, and the months became the first year.But It’s not ok, and it’s not going to be ok.What I was about to learn, was that my soul was forever changed. The very being that defined who I was and had become, died that night, though this body remained. The reporter was correct. What these eyes have seen time cannot erase, as there is no escape from the pain of a wound that will not heal.It does not and will not simply fade away. All of the early counseling consoling of friend’s and time, will not bring comfort.You just start that moment after, learning to live again.