Why Clementa Pinckney, one of the good guys?

Clementa Pinckney, who I know as a fellow son of South Carolina, was one of the good guys.

A decent man. More than decent. He was a pastor when I met him more than 20 years ago. His countenance, as my deacon father likes to say, would show you the face of God.

We were college kids then. Both students and both legislative aides in the South Carolina House of Representatives. Both tough enough to walk around the edges of the State House in a tie and blazer in 90-degree South Carolina heat. Both opportunistic enough to know how to find the catered caucus meetings. Both interested in public service.

And if college is the launching pad for your life, Clementa Pinckey stepped foot on campus a man already in orbit. He was operating at a higher altitude than the rest of us.

While the rest of us were coupling and partying and protesting and dreaming, Clementa was quietly spreading the Good News. While we were figuring out where we were going, Clementa was traveling briskly down his chosen path. One that would prepare him to lead his Charleston community as an advocate for the poor and voiceless in the South Carolina General Assembly, and one that would see him lead one of nation’s most historically significant black churches.

Actions speak. And the quiet guy who you might catch humming a hymn told you everything you needed to know about the man he was becoming.

It's easy to see where guys like Clementa are headed. What's hard is to accept this end. This end.

Nine people dead. Gunned down in a church. Clementa, a man who dedicated his life to helping others, killed without warning, provocation or justifiable reason.

I’m no pastor. But I’m a man of faith. And I’m struggling to make sense of this one, to wrap my mind around the tragedy and cruelty.

I’m not usually like this. As a newspaper editor I trade in death. It’s part of the job. I accept that. And I’ve seen plenty of things I would otherwise like to forget. Children starved by parents. Elderly people neglected to death. Stray bullets that always seem to somehow find sleeping children or some unsuspecting souls sitting on a couch in front in their television. Husbands who kill wives. Wives who kill husbands.

All of it touches you. But as journalists it’s our duty to make sense of the horrible things we do to each other. We want to delve deeply into what creates moments like this. We, ultimately, want to provide the communities we serve with some level of understanding. That way, we can explain, point to solutions, make sense of it. Curb some of the killing.

We set aside feelings. And we inevitably provide some understanding as to why some horrible crime has been committed. It might be inadequate policing. Or gang culture. Or too little legal protection for battered women. A catch-and-release court system. Or flawed oversight of at-risk children.

This?

This is hate. Plain and simple hate. The blind kind that is impersonal and impenetrable and incomprehensible.

As we learn more about Dylann Storm Roof, another son of South Carolina, I hope to at some point understand what generates this kind of hate. What causes someone to sit for an hour among pastors and elderly church folks before pulling a weapon and blasting them.

Nine people killed. Three of them 70 years old or older. Six of them women. One report says he reloaded five times. Another says he listened as one victim begged for mercy before fatally shooting him in front of his mother. She survived by playing dead. For a time she would lie in her dying son’s blood.

Over the weeks and months to come, our nation will continue to have a public discussion about this. It will be about guns and race and the Confederate flag and mental health and the definition of terrorism.

I’m more interested in what put this evil plan in motion. There are people in our nation who live on the fringe and who subscribe to the bankrupt and destructive notion of white supremacy.

But only a few turn to violence.

I get that Roof was a loner. I’ll assume that as a 9th grade dropout whose parents were pressuring him to find a job he was probably frustrated. I think it’s clear he needed some sensible adults around him. And it’s documented that he was no stranger to illicit drugs.

But how do you get from troubled teen to mass murderer? How do you kill nine strangers who you told police treated you so well it gave you second thoughts about going on a shooting rampage?

I’m a journalist wired to seek answers. But I’m also bound by truth and accuracy.