Edith Green (EG): I had met this young man at a party at a friend’s house. It was a very platonic relationship, and I just didn’t see this coming at all. One night I said to him that I was gonna go to a play with a girlfriend of mine. He followed me to New York, and I decided then and there that there was something wrong, and I told him, ”That’s it … I don’t want to see you anymore.”
And he threatened–he said ”Oh, you’ll be sorry for this.”
And sure enough one night when I was leaving the house I realized I was being followed, and I walked back and I started to say to him, ”You have to stop following me.”
And I didn’t see the gun, and I didn’t hear the bullet. I was shot–it was in the throat, and the bullet exited my back. On the way between the front and the back it did its damage. I have a spinal cord injury. They had to teach me how to swallow, how to talk.
Chaya (C): When you think about that whole …
EG: That whole era
C: That whole time …and you try to make sense of what happened to you, what comes to your mind?
EG: How could I not see it coming? That’s what bothered me. But, after he was released from prison, he shot another woman in the back, and I realized that I had not done anything to deserve what he had done.
C: The span of my life you were always on crutches.
EG: Yeah
C: But I always really admired how strong you were. You would just live your life, you wouldn’t let that interfere. You would go swimming, you would go shopping.
EG: Oh yeah. My biggest regret is that I couldn’t teach you how to dance. I couldn’t teach you the tap dancing steps. My only granddaughter, you know, I have 6 grandsons and you’re my only granddaughter, and I so wanted to teach you how to dance. But, you know, maybe we can still do something?
