In 1960, Mark was a first-grader at Crystal Spring Elementary School. In 1980, he became an assassin.
It all started at a USO dance in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1953. David, a staff sergeant in the Air Force, could not take his eyes off Diane, a student nurse. After a brief courtship David and Diane were married, and 10 months later, the couple celebrated the birth of their first child, a son named Mark. David left the military and began a career with Amoco.
By all appearances, the family was a model of middle class domestic life, but inside the home there was tension. Compounding matters Diane worried about her toddler son, who had a habit of rocking back and forth, almost trance like. The family’s pediatrician assured her that his rocking motions were nothing to worry about and that Mark would outgrow it
In 1960 Amoco transferred David to its branch office in Roanoke, located at 200 South Jefferson Street. The family rented a house at 2124 Crystal Spring Avenue. To those in the South Roanoke neighborhood it was the old Dawson home, occupied by A. R. Dawson and his wife for some 30 years. For Mark, now a first-grader at Crystal Spring Elementary School, this was a formative time and playing along the tree-lined streets of South Roanoke provided his first vivid memories of childhood…