35 years later

This week marks the 35th anniversary of the bombing of Sterling Hall on the University of Wisconsin campus. Until April 19, 1995 – when Timothy McVeigh would wreak havoc on Oklahoma City – the 1970 attack on Madison would enjoy the title of the worst act of terrorism leveled on American soil in the modern era.

Five years ago, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel did an excellent retrospective on the heinous act of Karl Armstrong. But this year, there has been relatively little note of the sordid anniversary outside of the Madison community.

A decade after Oklahoma City and four years removed from September 11, it may well be that the standard of terrorism in America has taken such a drastic turn that Mr. Armstrong’s evil no longer registers on the scale. But the event is still worthy of note. It was, after all, this bombing that really began to turn much of the pro-peace movement against the more violently-inclined anti-war movement (and, yes, those movements were marginally different even if they did have a significant overlap).

Today Mr. Armstrong is a free man, still living in the Madison community. His very presence gives countless locals – including myself – reason to doubt the criminal justice system. A man died in that explosion – a man with no relationship to the Army, the war in Vietnam or seemingly anything else controversial. And if ever there were a case for felony murder – a crime now considered capital in many states (albeit not Wisconsin) – Mr. Armstrong seems to embody it.

But alas that was then. The war has long since ended, Sterling Hall has been rebuilt (though it still shows a noticeable scar) and the original target of the bombing – Army Math – no longer resides in Madison. Yet the anniversary still bears remembering. After all, history can provide a lesson far more valuable than any lectures found in Sterling Hall or elsewhere at UW.