Graduation 2008

It has been 5 years and about 3 weeks since April 29, 2003, a pretty regular day for most East Nashville residents. As for me, I must have gotten up, gone on to work at my new job-the first in my chosen field of social services-after the drudgery of my first post-college job at an insurance company. For the Tuders family, living only about 5 or 6 streets over from me, it was also a typical morning-both Bo and Debra Tuders got up and went off to work, waking their youngest child, 13 year-old Tabitha, on their way out the door. Like they did each day.

But this typical spring day in East Nashville became a nightmare for the Tuders family. A great article ran in one of our local papers recently, if you are not familiar with this story and want to know more. But on April 29, 2003, Tabitha Tuders became a missing child.

The major criticism of this case is that she was not treated like a missing child. Despite never showing up for school that day, unusual for the straight-A student who volunteered at the library almost every day and was not the kind of girl to skip out, police had no physical evidence of an abduction and therefore did not issue an Amber Alert, and chastised the family for having no idea what kind of clothes she was wearing (despite the fact that they never saw what she left the house in), often blaming them for the investigations shortcomings.

Despite living within a stone's throw of a variety of sex offenders, police stereotyped her as a promiscuous, troubled girl who more than likely ran away with some older boyfriend the family did not know about-despite the fact that she left all the money she had, $20, and all her clothes and other possessions in her room. Despite the fact that she was a good student, did not even like talking to boys on the phone, and no one that knew this little girl could reconcile the persona that police assigned her with the Tabitha they knew.

Meanwhile, my roommate and I heard about her disappearance and talked about it often as it saturated local news coverage-and we often talked about the fact that so many things would have been different if this little girl had not lived in East Nashville, but West Nashville, or Belle Meade, or Green Hills. If her parents had been a doctor and a lawyer , and not a truck driver and a cafeteria worker. If she went to private school and not Bailey Middle. Would things have turned out differently if her parents had money to hire their own search party and investigators, when the police put of searching due to lack of evidence and poor weather.

And 5 years later, we still think of Tabitha Tuders, the girl that could have easily been me or my roommate a few years earlier. Gone missing from East Nashville, from a working class family, a good girl somehow assumed to be at fault in some way for hew own disappearance by those who are there to protect and serve-and that should mean everyone, no matter which side of the Cumberland you live on or how much money you have. Each time I hear her name on the news still, whether its an anniversary of her disappearance, or news of a possible new lead in her case, I struggle to keep the tears from coming. I did not know this girl or her family personally, but I know a lot of little girls just like her. I have walked or driven by her house many times in that neighborhood where I used to live.

Monday night, Tabitha would have graduated from high school. Stratford High School, where she never got the chance to attend, held a moment of silence in her honor. Her family attended. They still hold out hope that she may be out there, that she will come back home. I hope so, too.

http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/Cover_Story/2008/04/24/Tabitha_Tuders/