Vintage Chicago Tribune: Revisiting the Hubbard Woods Elementary School shooting and Laurie Dann
After a horror that left the Chicago area at a loss for words, Nicholas Corwin’s mother managed to find some. Writing just hours after her 8-year-old son was shot and killed at Hubbard Woods Elementary School on May 20, 1988, Linda Corwin described his best traits.
“A gifted athlete, a gifted artist, a gifted student; a child full of love and humor ...” she wrote in a statement published by the Tribune. “He loved people; he loved organizing games; he played basketball, hockey, baseball, soccer. He drew pictures that showed a keen eye for detail and a vivid imagination; a sweet and loving child who had concern for others.”
Tuesday, a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and 2 teachers at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. In the days since, local and national media outlets have included the Hubbard Woods school shooting and its gunman, Laurie Dann, in a chronology of similar incidents. Dann shot six children at the school, killing Nicholas, during a rampage that ended in her own death in the North Shore suburb.
The Tribune covered the shooting and its aftermath — and how, years later, the survivors are still coping.
Until next time ...
Check out @vintagetribune on Instagram and give us a follow @vintagetribune on Twitter.
Support my Chicago Tribune colleagues — a digital subscription is just 10 cents for a week for 12 weeks of stories, photos and insights.
Thanks for reading.
— Kori Rumore, visual reporter
Chicago Tribune 175th anniversary coverage | Vintage Voices | Pulitzer Prizes | Famous front pages | Were you a Tribune newspaper carrier? Share your story.
From kids to victims in minutes
“I know it’s over now,” said Scott Stone, a 6th-grader at Washburne who learned that Hubbard Woods pupils had been shot before he learned that his little brother, Adam, was okay. “But it’s always going to haunt me. The thing about this is you know these people; you talked to them.”
Read more >>>
School rampage: 1 dies, 6 shot >>>
Teacher recalls ‘day of terror’
“All I know is when the woman came in the room, I knew I was responsible for the children,” Amy Moses, a substitute teacher and the only adult witness, told the Tribune in 1988. “I was the teacher in the classroom, and those children were under my protection. I had to do everything in my power to protect them.”
Read more >>>
The many faces of the Hubbard Woods gunman
“Laurie Dann’s odyssey was marked by contradictions and baffling bits of behavior and roles. She was the quiet student, Daddy’s little girl, a popular sorority girl and a pretty bride. She was a stabbing suspect and the spurned wife who could not let go. She was the wonderful baby-sitter and the nightmarish baby-sitter,” the Tribune reported in 1988.
Read more >>>
Photo gallery: May 20, 1988′s school shooting in Winnetka
The school shooting was part of a violent, daylong rampage led by Dann throughout the village.
See more photos >>>
A survivor looks back
“As we rage at the perpetrators and mourn the dead, we tend to forget the survivors,” Eric Zorn wrote in 2018.
Read more >>>
Phil Andrew was targeted by school shooter Laurie Dann. Now he’s teamed up with high school students to prevent more bloodshed.
“What’s happened over the past 30 years,” Andrew told Heidi Stevens in 2018, “is we’ve gotten better at responding to these acute traumas. But we haven’t done much to prevent them.”
Read more >>>
Sign up to receive the Vintage Chicago Tribune newsletter for more photos and stories from the city’s past and the Tribune’s archives.
