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Ira Theadore Attebery

A Dark Family Secret
The Whole Story

The Battle of the Flowers Parade
April 27, 1979

Hidden somewhere in the closet of family history can be found dark secrets of individuals from which the rest of us feel repulsed and ashamed. But just like the inspiring stories of family heroes, these shameful stories are a part of the fabric of our whole family. And as time goes by historical perspective helps us put these dark stories into their proper places, not something to be featured on the front page and glorified, but something worth knowing about … because it is a part of the truth of our whole story.

This is a story of which I knew basically what had happened, but since it was seldom ever mentioned in family circles, no one had ever fully revealed the details of what happened on that fateful day of April 27, 1979, in San Antonio, Texas. So I went looking for the whole truth and this is what I was able to compile from numerous sources - books, magazines, newspaper articles, online articles and blogs, including several first hand accounts as well as my own personal knowledge of the events leading up to that awful day:

Ira Attebery was born April 29, 1914, the second son of a hard working farmer in the flat bottom lands of Clay County, Arkansas. When he was about 6 years old his family bought a farm of their own just across the state line in the Buncomb community near Naylor, Missouri. Growing up as a farm child is hard work with lots of chores. Long and hot summer days were spent working in the dusty fields hoeing grass and weeds. School was started in the hottest part of August so that it could be dismissed for a few weeks each fall to allow all the farm kids to join their families picking cotton.

Learning to shoot a gun was a normal part of growing up in those parts. Most of their farm acreage and hundreds of acres surrounding their farm was still in timber. Mass clearing of the land for farming did not come until about fifty years later. Wild game was abundant.

His father was a believer in education and he served on the board for the community school. Like his one and one-half year older brother, Ira was sent to town to attend high school. They would go into town and board there during the week and return home each weekend. But Ira, who has been described as headstrong, temperamental, and frequently fighting with his father, dropped out of school to begin an independent life of his own.

During World War II Ira served in the U.S. Coast Guard and as a member of the Merchant Marine which during peacetime is operated by private companies, but becomes part of the U.S. Navy during wartime to deliver troops and supplies for the Navy and in accordance with the Merchant Marine Act of 1936 mariners are considered military personnel. Although seemingly “safe on home territory,” this was hazardous duty during WWII with the highest rate of casualties (1 in 24) of any branch of service due to so many ships being sunk by German U-boats along the Atlantic coastline.

After the war Ira bought a long haul freight truck of his own and drove coast to coast delivering his loads. From time to time as the routing of his loads allowed him to do so, he would stop in on various family members who were by the mid 1950's scattered from Rockford, Illinois, to St.Louis, Missouri, and back to the remaining family in the Naylor, Missouri / Corning, Arkansas area. He would frequently bring news of other family members including his aunts and uncles would lived in various towns and cities the whole length and breadth of Illinois, Missouri, and Arkansas. He lived the solitary life of an independent trucker, but kept in occasional touch with various family members.

Then one night in 1961 (or 1971?) three nuns failed to stop at a stop sign along a stretch of highway where at that very moment Ira was driving his truck loaded with paint. He didn't have time to stop his big rig and the heavy truck smashed into the nun's car instantly killing all three (or two?) of them. Ira was trapped in the twisted wreckage of his truck cab and paint was spilled all over the highway. Even after months of recovery in a Veterans Administration hospital Ira never regained the ability to continue earning his living as an independent long haul truck driver and received disability checks for the rest of his life.

Instead Ira returned to the area of his family home a few miles south of Naylor, Missouri near the Arkansas state line and took up farming on 80 acres of newly cleared ground given to him by his father. At a time when surrounding area farmers were still using two row equipment, Ira used the insurance money he collected as a result of the accident and bought all new top of the line (for that time) farming equipment including two D-17 Allis Chalmers tractors (one diesel and one gasoline powered), a four row planter, four row cultivator, 12 foot wide disks, and a gleaming silver four row Gleaner combine. He lived in an AirStream trailer parked on the farm.

But farming didn't go well for Ira and after a very few years he gave it up (sometime before 1965). He then parked his AirStream in his father's barn lot right next to the chicken house just across the driveway from the back door of the main house. Using that as his home base, Ira began his nomadic years of wandering across the country in his car – sometimes visiting relatives and usually just seeing the varied sites all across these United States. A combination of his savings, a pension, his disability checks, and rent from his farm financially enabled Ira to live and travel as he chose.

A few years afterward Ira switched his mode of transportation to a 1972 Ute Liner motor home (although one writer claims it was a Winnebago) with an International Harvester engine, a one piece fiberglass roof, a spacious king-size overhead bed over the driver's seat, and an adjustable tilt steering column – considered to be the most highly regarded and strongest motor home then available. He would come back to his home base and stay for a few days or weeks, and then be off again … sometimes for months at a time.

In 1975, around the time that his younger brother Cecil Attebery died, Ira bought his own grave stone. Ira had it placed in the cemetery in Polar Bluff, Missouri, where his older brother, Bill Attebery who had never married as well, lived and worked. Poplar Bluff was the largest city in the area and located about thirty miles northeast of the family home place south of Naylor.

Beginning in 1977 Ira began making the annual 10-day long Battle of the Flowers Festival in San Antonio, Texas, highlighted by the Battle of the Flowers Parade a regular stop on his travels. It is a grand and colorful event held each year with multiple days of parades through the streets of town with marching bands and gaily decorated floats. The event commemorates the fallen heroes at the siege of the Alamo during the Texas War of Independence in the 1836 and generates about $45 million for San Antonio merchants.

At the first Battle of Flowers Parade in 1891 an actual “flower battle” was staged with half of the fresh flower-covered carriages, floats, and bicycles going in one direction and half in the opposite direction with each tossing fresh flowers at the other as they passed one another. In 1895 it became a week long celebration. Each year since 1909 a full royal court of Queen, Princess, and several Duchesses from San Antonio and other communities are selected and ride the various flower-covered floats.

The popular Battle of Flowers Parade is the oldest event and largest parade of the Fiesta San Antonio attracting crowds of over a quarter of a million spectators. It is the only parade in the United States produced entirely by women volunteers; and each of them is attired in a yellow dress and a yellow hat. Dozens of conspicuous floats are covered in flowers and with people adorned in colorful costumes, beautiful dresses, and striking uniforms. These floats feature local civic and military groups, businesses and members of the Fiesta royalty. All of the giant helium balloons and the beautifully-decorated horse-drawn carriages and antique cars along with uniformed cavalcades performing their routines thrill the delighted spectators. Interspersed throughout the Parade are dozens of military, college, and high school bands from far and near, marching and playing their stirring music to the entertainment of all. As each group or float passes the grassy area in front of the Alamo they leave flowers to commemorate the heroes of Texas independence.

In the days leading up to the first of the parades which was to be held on April 27 of 1979, Ira had parked his Ute Liner motor home that he used as a residence in a small trailer park not far from the parade route which was managed by Kate Copeland. While living there he tended to keep to himself. According to Ms. Copeland Ira “was a loner” and kept his windows covered so no one could see inside. And it was said that he would sometimes refuse to answer his door, or just speak to callers through his curtained windows. Copeland said that he “had little to do with people,” even so, she said that Ira had told her of his plans to go to Missouri and Arkansas after the parade.

Over the previous months Ira had already made arrangements with his younger brother, Herman Attebery (who lived in Rockford, Illinois), to join up and go on an extended multi-state hunting trip together in the weeks following this trip to once again witness firsthand the San Antonio festival. In anticipation of that hunting trip, Ira had assembled fifteen guns, including rifles, shotguns, and pistols, and plenty of ammunition all packed away in his motor home. And since he was expecting to be traveling away from home for several weeks, he had stocked up on his medications, which included the powerful tranquilizer Thorazine (used to treat anxiety, aggression, and tension), altogether totaling 19 bottles with all of them nearly full – which may mean that he sporadically took those medications. Thorazine had been prescribed for Ira by the doctors at the Veterans Administration hospital in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, from 1974 to 1977, and he returned there every six months to see a physician about a heart condition.

To assure himself of a good view of the parade this year, just as he had done in previous years, a week before the parade date Ira had contacted Gus Berggraf, the owner of a tire store on the corner of Broadway and East Grayson Street. Ira paid him $10 to park his blue (although some reports claim it was green and white) Ute Liner outside the front of the tire store just eighteen feet from the intersection where the parade was slated to start. Later Mr. Berggraf recalled that Ira had “parked there for the past two or three years for the parade and never caused any trouble.”

On Thursday, the day before the parade, Ira washed his big 20 foot long motor home getting it all spiffed up for the gay occasion.

On the morning of April 27, 1979, Ira had a short conversation with Mr. Berggraf. “I talked to him for about 30 minutes this morning,” Berggraf recalled, “he didn't seem the type to harm anyone. He was kind of a lonely man. We talked about him camper and about whether he needed any tires for it. I even gave him a business card.”

On that beautiful, warm, sunny Friday an estimated 300,000 people began taking their places along the one mile long parade route in the minutes just before the 1:00 PM starting time for the parade through downtown San Antonio. Many in the crowd had brought their folding chairs for a comfortable seat as they watched the parade go by them. Many other spectators were standing. Some even took places sitting on the hoods of cars in the lot of the Motor Imports car dealership with a big helium advertising balloon floating overhead just across the street from the tire store and Ira's Ute Liner. Still others sought good viewing positions for themselves in front of the tire store and around Ira's Ute Liner which had its window shades drawn shut. Some of the spectators had even brought their lunches and ice chests to better enjoy the parade.

Meanwhile there were hundreds of parade participants milling about as they prepared to kick off the parade from the staging area, a large empty parking lot under a curving freeway overpass one block away from the starting line. Some were in clown suits, some dressed as matadors, others as Spanish dancers. Among the various individuals and many brightly decorated floats there were local school bands and bands from out of town. As the bands were warming up there was a cacophony of thunderous drums echoing off the concrete of the bridge above them.

Soon the parade started. A high school color guard led the procession. The deep sound of the beating drums were coming closer. As they reached the intersection the beautiful floats dazzled the crowd. Women in long, flowing dresses danced along the street. Military academy members twirled their fake guns.

The fateful events that were about to transpire happened just three months after the near nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island (March 28, 1979) near Middletown, Pennsylvania, which still occupied front page headlines in many newspapers. But on this gay day in San Antonio, Texas, any life and death worries like those seemed very far away, indeed.

Near the intersection of Broadway and Grayson there were a group of six (or by some accounts seven) policemen that had been directing traffic and were now watching the parade as it started by. The color guard had just passed through the intersection when Ira opened the door of his motor home and to the uniformed police officers standing nearby on the edge of the parade route yelled “Traitors! Traitors! Traitors!” and “What kind of a society is this?” (His remarks were heard by thirteen year old Judy Gutierrez who survived the ordeal by cowering on the street about 20 feet from the Ute Liner.) Ira then fired a barrage of blasts from his 12 gauge shotgun into the group of officers. (Other eyewitnesses claim the shotgun came out of the camper window.) Dozens of spectators, as well as the policemen, were hit with the spray of pellets.

There were pops and deeper resonant explosions filling the air. “We really didn't think anything of it. We thought it was maybe the ROTC shooting rifles,” said Mary Pashom who was sitting on nearby benches as the parade to begin. At first everyone thought the sounds were just some pre-parade fireworks or kids playing with firecrackers. But then they knew something was dreadfully wrong when people all around started falling.

Joe Ramirez watched the siege from a nearby side street and said , “I saw two policemen and possibly one sheriff's officer get hit. A cop was shot in the leg and crawled on his belly … and [then] just lay there.”

At that same moment less than 10 feet from where the policemen had been standing Tom Mueller, an exchange student from Dusseldorf, West Germany, was on a passing parade float along with eight other teenaged students. They all quickly laid down as bullets whistled over their heads. Mueller later described the situation saying, “It was just horrible. You can't just imagine what it was like. Oh, my God, it was horrible.”

The police returned fire.

An eyewitness across the street, Frank Campa, said that Ira opened the side door and fired on the officers in the street. He said that Ira was stuck by a spray of pellets, possibly from a police shotgun.

Sargent Gary Nagy was the first wounded policemen. He managed to crawl to a nearby squad car. His wife, who was nearby watching the parade ran to his side and was, also, hit by gunfire.

The San Antonio Police radio squawked, “Officers down … officers down at Broadway and Grayson.” The television channel 5 KENS-TV newsroom sent Gary DeLaune and Ronnie Smith in their live-truck to the scene just a few blocks away from the station. TV news reporter Margo Spitz and cameraman Joe Flores were already near the intersection and had began videotaping the chaotic scene.

Inspector Elroy Crenwelge, Lt. Robert Maldonado, Sgt. Ben Donahoe, Sgt. Tom Barker, and Sgt. L.R. Grassmuck were the other five officers there at the corner of Broadway and Grayson. The first four of these crawled from the immediate area or were aided by bystanders. Officer Grassmuck was hit in the leg and foot.

Still more policemen on parade duty quickly surrounded the motor home. Ira switched to a semi-automatic AR-15 (the civilian version of the military M-16) and began going from window to window of the 20 foot long motor home firing wildly into the fleeing crowd of parade spectators. Police Captain Patrick Nichols, one of the officers in the original target group who was not wounded, reported that Ira “would expose himself as a flash, fire, and then duck from the door.”

Police Lt. Robert Maldonado, one of the first hit by the gunfire, says, “Most of those rifle shots were aimed at me when I fired at him a third time.” And speaking of the two women who died, “I think those two women panicked, stood up [from right in front of the motor home where they had been seated to watch the parade] and got in the way. I think his battle was with the police.” The two women, 26 year old Ida Long and 47 year old Amelia Castillo, were both shot a close range and died instantly.

The sounds of gunfire and the shattering of glass as automobile windshields were blown out filled the air as the Channel 5 team began their live television report out over the public airwaves.

There is even one report that a woman, her grown daughter, and the daughter's boyfriend carrying the woman's young son on his shoulders went running right by the motor home in the midst of the confusion (which seems improbable). As they went by, it is reported, Ira tried to pull the boy inside, but his relatives were able to wrestle him away.

Patrolman John Scott was injured when his motorcycle overturned as he raced toward the chaotic battlefield at the corner of Broadway and East Grayson Street that day.

A SWAT team was called to the scene. Some of them took up positions on nearby roof tops. Tear gas canisters were fired into Ira's motor home. A full scale gun battle raged between Ira and dozens of police officers.

Police Chief Emil Peters estimated that about 4500 people were in gunshot range from the intersection of Broadway and Grayson where Ira had parked his motor home. To shield them a group of policemen, Air Force personnel and available volunteers began pushing an Air Force bus into the intersection to provide cover for the escaping spectators.

There were whacking slaps of the lead bullets striking concrete and the whine of bullets ricocheting all around. Bullets were flying everywhere! One eyewitness tells of limp bodies hitting the ground “like beef on a butcher table.” Everyone was desperately trying to get low and take cover. Blood flowed from wounds. Ambulance attendants were unable to reach some of the wounded people because of the gun battle.

A man jumped up from among those in front of the car dealership and yelled, “He's gotten the cops! There's no one who can help us!" In a panic everyone started to run, following his lead.

Leaving rows of empty chairs behind them lining the street, hundreds of panic stricken parade spectators went running away from the sound of the gun fire. Mothers clutched their children as they ran; some were literally drug along. Hundreds of people crouched down trying to avoid becoming targets. Parents cradled their children and sobbed softly. The wail of sirens came from a distance and then converged upon the scene from all directions. The sounds of gunfire increased exponentially with various caliber of weapons being fired. Helicopters hovered over the area.

As the crowd ran down the hot asphalt street they met a woman in an older model long white car. She asked what was going on. When told that someone was shooting people, she asked, “Well, are they gonna finish the parade after they shoot him?”

In one area someone screamed, “He's coming!”

A Policeman sprinted around a corner and shouted, “Gun, gun, gun,” to a huddled sea of people under a truck trailer. A woman with child was caught up by the crowd like a piece of driftwood in a wave. As the crowd surged as a single mass her head was slammed into the rigging under the trailer and she went down. Several people surrounded her to prevent the others from trampling her. When they pulled her to her feet on the other side of the trailer, she was bleeding profusely from a head wound. A hundred people or more were herded into an old brewery building less than a block away from the center of gunfire and then the police closed the heavy iron doors to keep them safe inside.

Gunfire continued sporadically. Rumors spread through the crowds: some said there were only one gunman, others said there were several.

The all out gunfire lasted about thirty minutes before Ira's AR-15 jammed on a clip of ammunition. A police officer was able to take advantage of the situation while Ira remained in view through the window of the motor home and wounded him while he was reloading one of his weapons. One officer claimed he crept to a window and shot Ira in the head.

The KENS-TV live television reports continued with DeLaune and Spitz squatting in the middle of the street interviewing witnesses of the carnage along with video of the scene to all the viewers at home. Neal Merchant was hurrying across the street when DeLaune stopped him and asked for an interview. Merchant said that he and his family were seated directly across the street from the RV's door. He said that he heard a shot, saw a policeman fall, and then saw the RV's door open and saw smoke coming from a gun. He said he saw at least two little kids hit as well. Merchant angrily said, “I was in Vietnam, and if I had a chance I'd go in there and kill the SOB!”

Dianne Wick was watching the parade with her sister and her sister's son when they heard the shots and saw someone fall. She turned to speak to her sister at the very moment that one of Ira's bullets stuck her sister's throat. A photo taken in the midst of all the confusion of Dianne and her nephew huddled together with blood flowing from a would to her head became the cover picture for Life magazine. Dianne was trying to comfort the young boy, Tommy Lapping, while his mother, who had been shot in the neck, was being treated by paramedics at the scene.

The incident ended at about 2:15 PM following a period during which no shots were fired by either side. The 150 police officers who surrounded the now quiet motor home had waited 45 minutes to move in fearing the possibility of a hostage. Then the police lobbed in tear gas and fired a barrage of bullets from all directions into the motor home hoping to finish the job. SWAT team member Sgt. Sidney Marsh then crawled into the motor home. Seeing Ira lying on the floor, Marsh emptied both barrels of his shotgun into Ira's body, but Ira was probably already dead when he went inside.

When the smoke cleared, Ira Attebery was dead from a self-inflicted .38 caliber bullet wound “behind the right ear” according to Police Chief Emil Peters. Lined up on the back of the seats inside an officer reported seeing “at least six rifles … [and] a lot of loaded clips.” Later a full accounting found a total of fifteen guns in Ira's possession: a double barreled shotgun, a semi-automatic pistol, nine rifles, and four .38 caliber revolvers.

About 100 police officers swarmed to the now quiet scene.

As Ira's shirtless body was being carried out on a stretcher from the bullet-riddled motor home the people crept out of their hiding places under benches, in doorways, and behind buildings and rushed to the scene cheering.

The police cordoned off the immediate area and cleared everyone off the streets. Using bullhorns the officers traversed the parade route telling the remaining tens of thousands of parade goers along the street downtown to go home. The parade was canceled.

Police Chief Peters said at the time, “It's obvious he came with a plan or design to do what he did,” not knowing that all of the “evidence” on which he based his opinion were actually the preparations for an extended hunting trip with his brother in another state. Police Lt. Don Brooks said that a search of the motor home failed to provide any hints of Ira's motivation.

At the end of the siege Ida Jean Dollard (or Long), age 27 (or 26), a mother of two children was found shot to death on the sidewalk in front of the Ute Liner. Her children who had been with her, ages 8 and 11, were wounded. The other victim, also killed nearby, Amalia Castillo, age 49 (or 48), had 13 children. These two women were reportedly killed by rounds from Ira's AR-15. Thirty-two additional people were injured by direct gunfire, bullet or shrapnel fragments, or flying glass. Twenty were hurt in the resulting melee. Six policemen were were among those shot. Some faced lifetimes of pain from the shotgun pellets still remaining in their bodies.

Routine blood samples take from Ira's body by Dr. Ruben Santos, the Bexar county medical examiner, revealed the traces of the drug PCP. Santos also said that it appeared that the tranquilizer Thorazine was in his system. PCP, known on the streets as “angel dust,” was originally develop as an animal tranquilizer and is a deadly unpredictable drug which can bring on aggressive and sometimes suicidal behavior in humans where even very small doses can be fatal. “It (PCP) probably caused the erratic behavior leading to the attack,” Dr. Santos reported. “While there may have been some previous mental trauma, the influence of PCP is more spectacular and I would ascribe his behavior to the drug.”

Ira, apparently, went berserk under the delusion that the police were chasing him.

Robert Pugh, director of the Bexar County Mental Health Department, confirmed that he was told by police that Ira had contacted the police department on more than one occasion “some time” before the day of the shooting to complain about the police allegedly being “after him” and to seek mental health aid. Ira's brother Roy Attebery told reporters at the time that Ira “felt the police were following him all the time, but it was all in his imagination.”

Clayton Richards, the manager of another mobile home park where Ira had once lived said he forced Ira to move out of that park because he was “always paranoid and queer acting. He was afraid of something all the time. He said police always were watching him and people were always stealing things.” (Unknown to Richards, someone had actually stolen a battery from his vehicle in the past.) Richards, also, reported that Ira always paid his rent in cash because he was afraid of banks … and thought this was strange behavior not knowing that Ira's father had a similar distrust of banks with good cause having lived through times when banks went bankrupt and depositors lost all of their money in the days before Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation guarantees.

However, in the days and hours just preceding the start of the parade that horrendous day in San Antonio “apparently nothing excited anybody's concern that he was mentally ill,” Mental Health Director Pugh said and offered, “I would have been very happy if the police had brought the man here.” Had Ira been brought in, according to Pugh, he would have been examined by a psychiatrist.

There was a night-time parade scheduled for Saturday, the next night, to pass along the same route. Many thought the horrific events of the previous day would be reason enough to cancel the rest of the festival. But police officers lined the route to screen and search all attendees before allowing them to take their seats along the street. The crowd seemed larger than on the previous day. They wildly cheered and screamed as the various bands and floats made their way down the parade route. Several people threw celebratory firecrackers into the street, but the parade continued as law enforcement officers swarmed the area from which the firecrackers had been thrown. One man ran through the ranks of a marching band screaming, but he was quickly surrounded and carted off.

In response to a wrongful death suit on behalf of the victims and seven other lawsuits seeking damages against Ira's estate, on December 2, 1979, an auction was held at the Joe Freeman Coliseum to sell Ira's bullet riddled 1972 Ute Liner motor home (in the exact same condition as is was after the shooting, according to the police), rifles, shotguns, pistols, and some blood stained unused cartridges, to the highest bidder with the proceeds being added to about $16,000 in cash plus $90,000 in savings accounts (which were originally to go to various members of his family upon his death) from the estate all going to the families of the victims. The AR-15 .233 caliber semi-automatic rifle sold for $485 and Ira's Bible sold for $15. Later the 80 acre farm which Ira owned was sold at auction on the Ripley County Courthouse steps in Doniphan, Missouri, with the proceeds going to the victims.

The actions taken that day by Ira have left lasting impressions, both mental and physical, on his victims:

Gus Burggraf, owner of the tire store where Ira parked that day, now refuses to even talk about all that happened.

“I don't think any of us will ever forget it,” said Bob Walker who owns a liquor store across the street from the scene of the shooting.

Sargent Gary Nagy, one of the wounded policemen whose wife was also wounded, says, “Not a day goes by that I don't think about that day and what it did.”

Lt. Robert Maldonado, the most seriously wounded policeman, has undergone three operations and still carries more than 100 pellets in his body. His legs have scars that look like measles. Once a jogger and gardener, now he can't even bend over to pull weeds. “Physically, I'll never be the same,” he says.

Several of the wounded policemen were forced to retire because of their wounds.

Fifteen children lost their mothers forever ... some right in front of their eyes.

Sadly, what was done that day, is done, and cannot be un-done nor even changed just a little ... by anyone. The effects of Ira Attebery's life ... like that of all of our lives ... even though ours may not make newspaper headlines ... and although his life story is now complete ... the effects of his actions still lives on in those whom his life touched for good … or for evil. May God grant our prayers that the effects of our lives will be for good.

2011-09-19 20:51:01 RBaxter

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