#wxlt-40

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Special thanks to Mr. John Griffin, who produced the E! Network documentary about Chris, for providing me with this footage. Please see the youtube video description for more details.

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Christine Chubbuck leans against an RCA TK42 broadcast camera on July 1, 1974 - two weeks before her death. Colorization and restoration done by me. Click here to see the original.

Why dedicate a blog to this?

I’ve had an interest in Chris' story since I heard about it in 2021.  However, my intent isn’t to make a blog about the tragic incident itself.  That would be a glorification of depression and suicide.  I made this page because I want to humanize someone who is – apart from a few pictures and a newspaper article – enigmatic and unknowable.  I want to humanize someone who desperately sought connection with others but could never find it. My intention is to be respectful and preserve history. I have zero interest in seeing or looking for "the tape", as that does nothing to actually shed light on who Chris was and would only cause hurt for her friends and family.

Chris desperately wanted love and companionship but never found it.  Her final act was not only a statement regarding sensationalism in the news, but also, in my opinion, a last desperate cry, a way to finally be seen without any mask or pretense.  The last moments of a person’s life are, under normal circumstances, private and personal.  This is especially true in the case of suicide, where most choose to seclude themselves.  However, Chris chose to make this last moment extremely public.  She felt lonely in her daily life, and through making the personal into something public, others thereby witnessed her private suffering and pain.  I am in no way insinuating that this choice was moral on her part, or saying that she necessarily met that goal.  In committing suicide, she couldn’t live to experience the connection she may have sought via public suicide.  In completing the act publicly, she also caused trauma for those who saw it.  Whether that was purposeful or merely a byproduct of the point she was trying to make will always remain unknown.  Though I’m of the opinion that she probably saw the ends as justifying the means.

Upon reading the Washington Post article by Sally Quinn, it becomes apparent that many people had their own ideas about Chris, but none of them could understand her motivation.  And the truth is that no one except Christine could know the definitive reason for what she did.  She was disgusted with how society was headed towards consuming more and more “blood and guts” content, as she put it. In my opinion, she also thought her life was circling the drain.  She felt like a loser and didn’t think circumstances would improve. 

But her brother Greg said it perfectly when he stated this in 2006:

“I think Christine never really had the image of herself that the rest of the world perceived.  They perceived her as confident, they perceived her as attractive, and they perceived her as gifted at her job.  And I don’t really know that she perceived herself fully as any of that.”

Chris was worthy of being loved and loving herself. And if you are feeling the way she felt - feeling as if you're unimportant, unseen, unlovable - just know that you deserve empathy, respect, and love, just like Chris did.

Who Was Chris Chubbuck?

Here is a collection of quotes gathered from all available sources. I hope it can paint a more complete picture of who Chris was and how others saw her.

“She used to come up with pretty weird ideas, but I thought this was about the weirdest, you know.  I thought it was also one of her crazy ideas and I tried to change the subject, real quickly, but I didn’t take it seriously. … Well, I think [Chris] felt extremely lonely and you know, she’d get upset over things that, I think, wouldn’t get other people upset over.”  -Robert M. Smith (Police Report, 1974)

“[Chris has] talked to me about suicidal tendencies before, but never attempts. …She’s had a problem that we talked about, about three weeks ago that ah, she hoped to resolve soon, but wasn’t resolved.  It was kind of a deep personal problem that she’s always had.  Maybe, I, I don’t know her not solving that problem made her feel worse or not.”  -Shay Taylor (Police Report, 1974)

“I thought Chris was extremely happy here.  I didn’t know her quite well and she had told me many times that she was- had felt she had found herself.  She very much enjoyed her show ahmm, loved meeting the people, the public, and this was exactly what she wanted to do in life.  She had a… lose her temper every now and then, but everybody does in this business, so nothing, nothing that ah- would ah, give you any preview of something like this.”  -Jean Reed (Police Report, 1974)

“[Shay Taylor says] Chris had numerous problems involving a personal matter.  Miss Taylor stressed that Chris had been seeing a female psychiatrist in Bradenton for some time, and felt that seeing and talking to the doctor had helped her somewhat.  Miss Taylor advised that chris had been quite upset over numerous sexual problems – her main problem being that she was a 29-year-old virgin.  She further stated that Chris was a very unstable person; even though she engaged in various social and sport functions.  Chris apparently tried to keep herself occupied with many activities to relieve her frustrations.”  (Police Report, 1974)

“They say she’s been depressed.  But why she did what she did or the way she did it, nobody knows.” -Capt. Ellis Denham (Akron Beacon Journal, 16 Jul 1974)

“She hadn’t been going out on very many dates.  Her mother said she loved her job but unfortunately it was her whole life.  I guess it just wasn’t enough.”  -Rob Smith (Akron Beacon Journal, 16 Jul 1974)

“She was always joking around, saying weird things.  I thought at the time it was just a bad joke.” -Rob Smith (Akron Beacon Journal, 16 Jul 1974)

“She was extremely moody.  If something technical went wrong with her stories or film clips, she always got really upset.  But I didn’t think she was suicidal.”  -Rob Smith (Akron Beacon Journal, 16 Jul 1974)

At the hospital an hour before Miss Chubbuck died, her older brother Timothy said she had recently been “despondent and lonely. I think it was the culmination of a lot of things.” (Akron Beacon Journal, 16 Jul 1974)

“[She was] a very talented and intense young woman.”  -Betty Cope, WVIZ Manager (Akron Beacon Journal, 16 Jul 1974)

“She was a wonderful person, very brilliant but never terribly happy.”  -Nancy (Newman) Pope, former Cleveland roommate (Akron Beacon Journal, 16 Jul 1974)

“She loved doing human interest and community involvement things.  She didn’t really care about hard news.”  [Ken] Crockett said Miss Chubbuck gave the impression she “had it all together” although she sometimes was frustrated by technical problems that plagued the station.  “She enjoyed what she was doing but she’d also get frustrated when she’d do a story and it wouldn’t get on the air,” he said.  “It always seemed to be the blood-and-guts things that got in place of her stories.  After the news she would sit here and say, ‘I’ve done these stories and told people they’d be on tonight but they’re not.  Instead what do we do but run a story about a dog hit by a car in Bradenton.’”  Although he described her as “outgoing” with the ability to laugh at herself, Crockett said the tall smartly-dressed newswoman also had frequent moments of “depression and moodiness.”  One of those surfaced last Friday when she had “bombed out” on her show that morning that featured interviews with air-conditioner sales and repairmen.  But the same day she also spent $175 fixing up the Volkswagen convertible she used for the 10-minute trip from her beachfront home to the station.  (Fort Meyers News-Press, Jul 16 1974)

While Miss Chubbuck’s colleagues remembered her as a lively, vibrant personality, her family and close friends said she frequently suffered from severe depression.  (Tampa Tribune, Jul 17 1974)

[Tim said that Chris was] a young woman who poured all of her energy into each day’s pursuits, in a frustrating search for perfection.  Be it skin diving, ceramics, or her profession, [Tim] said, his sister was never satisfied with doing well; but inevitably bemoaned the distance between reality and the unattainable.  [He said] “She was clambakes and sea-shells, sandy feet, and sunburned skin… she was an open mind, probing and asking, forcing those around her to stretch and grow.”  … In place of flowers, the family requested donations to Sarasota County’s financially-beleaguered Humane Society, one of Miss Chubbuck’s favorite charities.  (Tampa Tribune, Jul 19 1974)

“Miss Chubbuck always pushed our programs and sales projects on her television show,” [district forester Mike] Keel said.  She seemed to love the outdoors.” …  After her memorial service Thursday, her brother, Timothy Chubbuck, said Chris “loved all living things.” … “Miss Chubbuck had made a practice of supporting emphatically forestry and conservation programs…”  (Tampa Bay Times, 20 Jul 1974)

“She was terribly, terribly, terribly depressed.  She had a job that she loved.  She said constantly that if it ended tomorrow, she would still be glad she had had it.  But she had nothing else in her social life.  No close friends, no romantic attachments or prospects of any.  She was a spinster at 29, and it bothered her.  She couldn’t register with people.  That’s the main thing.  She was very sensitive and she tried and she would reach out, you know, ‘Hi, how are you, won’t you come have a cup of coffee with me?’ and you say ‘no,’ but you don’t say, ‘Won’t you come have a cup of coffee with me,’ that sort of thing, in her personal people relationships, and it really got to her.  She’d been very depressed.  She’d been seeing a psychiatrist who didn’t really feel that she was that serious about not wanting to live.  She felt if you’ve tried as hard as you can, you’ve prepared yourself, you work hard, you reach your hand out to people, and nobody takes it, then there’s something wrong with your drumbeat, and she really felt she couldn’t register with anyone except her family.  And at 29, that’s sad.”  -Peg Chubbuck (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

There were some who were confused by the word “attempted” suicide in her script.  But those who worked with her had a ready explanation.  Chris was too good a newswoman to write suicide when it might have failed.  She was too precise.  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

Chris’s program had ratings of 500 homes.  In season, maybe 1,000.  She was not by any means a “big TV star.”  She wanted to be.  She wanted to be recognized and was hard-working, diligent, and competent.  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

She complained often about what she saw as the number of tasteless and violent stories on the air, about the station’s pandering, in her opinion, to its advertisers, and about the low pay… She was bitter about the fact that Nelson seemed to want only those who would work for the least amount of money, not those who were the most talented. … On the Friday night before Chris killed herself, she had a terrible fight with Mike Simmons, the news director, about her story being cut in favor of a shoot-out.  “She was very emotional, would get unusually upset about these things,” said Simmons.  “She would, well, throw tantrums a lot.”  A week earlier, she had thrown a terrible tantrum when the director placed a bouquet of plastic flowers on her interview table.  In front of her guest, a state politician, she had flung the flowers across the studio, screaming, “I won’t have these damned things in my studio.”  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

She had very few dates in the past months.  When she had invited men, several times, to have dinner, they had accepted, then not even bothered to show up or call.  “I don’t think Chris had more than 25 dates in the last 10 years,” her mother said.  Last summer she had had an ovary removed.  The doctors told her then that if she didn’t have children within the next two or three years, she probably never would.  And, of course, there were no prospects.  She had no real friends.  She was a strange combination of someone who wanted, needed desperately, the support and friendship of others, and in another way rejected others out of a sense of defensive pride.  Her initial image was one of a self-confident, totally contained, together young woman.  She would seem haughty, distant, standoffish, really.  Yet when people began to know her, she evidenced such a crying need for a completely committed relationship that it drove them away for fear they couldn’t give her what she wanted.  “There was a haunting melody in Chris,” Mrs. Chubbuck said.  “She gave so many presents, spent so much money, not to buy their friendship…but because she wanted to.  It’s almost like her life was a little out of gear with other people.  She was the only person I ever knew who would walk into a room and every head would turn…yet nobody ever came over and asked for her phone number.  It’s been like that since she was 13.”  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

“I would have discounted [her talk of suicide] if she had said it to me,” her brother Tim said.  “She’d said it before.”  “We’d all heard it,” her mother said.  “I think it was always serious.  I’ve always known it might happen.”  “But she always said it in an offhand way,” Tim said.  “But everything she said was offhand,” her mother said.  “I always thought,” Greg said, “in my own mind, that she was intelligent and would find a way to carry herself through.  In the course of the last two or three years I’d had that conversation with her many times.  I didn’t think of it as an active thing.  I thought of it as something she wanted to talk about.”  … “You know, she’s always talked about it.  ‘If life gets too tough, I’ll get out.  If I can’t handle it, I’ll leave.’  It was her decision, and she decided that it was all just too much for her. Whether anybody else thought it wasn’t - well, it was.”  “It was a recurrent conversation,” said Tim.  “In times of real downness, it seemed to her a real solution for escape.  We gave it credence.”  “We thought it possible because there wasn’t anything in her life,” said her mother.  “If someone asked me a few weeks ago if it was possible, I would have said ‘yes’.  For her, it was the only way out.”  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

“She often referred to herself as someone who still believed in wine and roses, being sent flowers and called up for a date.  But she would go through periods of two or three years where nobody would even ask her out for a hotdog.  You’ve got to learn to crawl before you walk, and Chris never even had a crawling relationship with anybody.  She never had more than two dates with anyone in her life.  She really wanted to find someone to love and get married.  It was much more important to her than her job.  She used to say that even a bad relationship is better than none.  Her 30th birthday would have been Aug. 24, and she would have been officially an old maid.  It bothered her like hell.”  -Peg Chubbuck (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

Six months ago, [George Ryan] thought she was “a liberated woman, a pain-in-the-ass, not very attractive, almost manly.  She was doing a man’s job, only doing it better than a man.  She was precise and efficient.  There was nothing feminine about her.”  But once he started “T.A.”, he improved, and so did his opinion of Chris, and hers of him.  “She was two different people, really.  Sometimes she was really together, her posture and carriage, and just the way she said “hello”, were different.  She was a methodical and efficient career girl, a Germaine Greer, a Gloria Steinem.  There was an ‘I can handle it… but not really’ air about her.  Other times, her posture was rotten; she made no effort to look attractive, she would put herself down, she had this poor-little-me, kick-me attitude.”  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

“In the last few weeks before she died, she had turned into a ‘yes, but’ person,” Andrea said.  “She became a sniveling, self-pitying creature at the end, and I really lost patience with her.  I thought that if I got mad at her, she would be able to pull herself out of it.  She discounted me as a friend so many times, and other people, too.  But I had the feeling that if she had friends, she wouldn’t have been able to say she wasn’t a success.  Every time she’d be hurt by someone, she could chalk another one up.  If you didn’t call her or do something positive with her, she’d think you didn’t like her… She said to me once, ‘I would like to have just for one week, somebody I really loved, who really loved me.’  Her only trouble was that she came on so heavy, so intense.  Her way of covering up her insecurities was to be physically confident.  That was just her manner.”  -Andrea Kirby (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

“In my view, she was very self-centered.  Hers were the only important problems.  She was constantly aware of how people reacted to her, immediately read things into what they said to her - but it was not a two-way street. She talked about her suicide attempt a lot.  She was threatened by everyone.  I once tried to do an interview, and she got furious.  And they let Shay Taylor, the other camerawoman, do one, and Chris hit the roof.  She even thought Miss Florida was going to take over her job when somebody suggested she do the weather. “She needed encouragement or support and we all tried to compliment her on what she was doing.  She dearly loved a kind word, but she put other people down without flashing an eye.”  Jean Reed describes Chris as an elegant dresser, as someone with talent and someone you could have a good time with, a good laugh with.  “She had a great sense of the absurd, almost a macabre sense of humor.  And of course, she adored to laugh about Nelson.  She did not like the unexpected.  She insisted on being well-prepared at all times.  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

Shay Taylor, the 24-year-old camerawoman, felt that Chris displayed her insecurity by being standoffish, masculine, and occasionally using crude language in front of her male guests, apparently to turn them off deliberately.  “If she met an attractive man or had a good-looking male guest that I knew she was interested in,” said Shay, “she’d always tell them that they ought to take me out.”  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

“But quite frankly, people who live on the beach, on Siesta Key, are just different from the rest of us.  They’re more bohemian.  They have a different lifestyle from us who are more urbanized.  Chris fit into that category.”  -Bob Nelson (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

[Bob] Keehn liked Chris Chubbuck.  “She had a protective coloration,” he said, “what might appear to some to be no need for friends.  I felt she was someone with very deep feelings.  Someone who seemed more involved with her job and with her emotions than most people seem to be.  She had a little more depth than most people.  What seemed to concern her was her involvement with the human condition.  She would express a negative reaction to people and the way they treated each other.  One thing about her, though, she was always self-deprecating.  Always.  She seemed so hangdog that I’d always compliment her purposefully.  And she’d always put down the compliment.”  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

Rob Smith, the 22-year-old night news editor, was closest to Chris at the station.  He liked her a great deal and she would confide in him.  He thought she was bright and talented and professional, but he was horrified by the way she killed herself and found it very uncharacteristic. (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

“She was an extremely intelligent girl and a good reporter, a real asset to the news department.”  -Mike Simmons (Ocala Star-Banner, Aug 1 1977)

Most of the time, she spent, I think, feeling like she was an outsider.  And um, there were times when she was so moody that you could just tell by looking at her that you best back off.  There were two sides to her: there was a side that was warm and loving and funny and generous and giving.  And then there was this other side that was just like this Dr. Jekyll-and-Mr. Hyde.”  -Sally Williamson, former classmate (Boulevard of Broken Dreams #106, 2006)

“She had no greys in her life.  Everything was black-and-white.  Things were either wonderful or terrible.  Chrissy just didn’t have a compromise button.  Chris clearly had some depressive issues; my parents took her to psychologists and so forth. … I think that [blood and guts] part of television, that salacious part of television, Chris detested. … I think Christine never really had the image of herself that the rest of the world perceived.  They perceived her as confident, they perceived her as attractive, and they perceived her as gifted at her job.  And I don’t really know that she perceived herself fully as any of that. … I think that she felt that the station emphasized sensationalism over serious journalism.  Was her final statement a rage against that kind of television?  Yes, clearly it was.  Was it how she felt?  Absolutely. … If you have any bit of suspicion that somebody’s in trouble, do everything you can to help.  Hold them in your arms, remember to tell people you love them.  It’s the best you can do.”  -Greg Chubbuck (Boulevard of Broken Dreams #106, 2006)

“It was a huge story.  It was all over the networks and all over the newspapers. … Nobody really knew her.  People didn’t really know who she was; they had no idea what kind of person she was, what was going on in her head.”  -Sally Quinn (Boulevard of Broken Dreams #106, 2006)

“I remember when they first brought in Christine Chubbuck.  She was hired because she was intelligent, smart, witty; a very good writer.”  -Craig Sager (Boulevard of Broken Dreams #106, 2006)

“She was very anxious to be seen.  She felt that because she was on the edge of a large market, that maybe somebody from Tampa, St. Petersburg might see her, they might hire her. … Everybody that knew her had some regret that we hadn’t realized her problem.  -Dan Lunin (Boulevard of Broken Dreams #106, 2006)

“Personally, I feel Christine wanted some significance in her life.  And, for whatever reason she did it, the exact reason still baffles me today.  -Gordon Galbraith (Boulevard of Broken Dreams #106, 2006)

After the loss of her first boyfriend in the car crash, Christine devoted every morning to helping a passenger left paralyzed in the accident in his rehab sessions. Greg recalled: “That’s how she responded to losing her first love — to try and help his friend.” It is this tender side which Greg fears will not be seen on screen. “I just wish the people who were interested in Christine were interested in who she really was or helping people who find themselves in the same circumstance. (The Sun, 2016)

“My parents had spent a literal fortune trying to figure out why their gorgeous, beautiful, ­brilliant ten, 12, 15, 17-year-old didn’t react to people the same way as everybody else.” [Greg] now thinks Christine was bipolar, but that was not a recognized condition in 1974. “Christine would do things to a high level of ability then stop and do something else which, again, was one of the early signs she was bipolar. And also the fact that nothing brought her joy in a way being good at something brings joy to most people.” (The Sun, 2016)

He thinks Christine purposefully chose a day when none of her relatives would be watching the show. Greg was at work and his grandparents, who were normally avid viewers, had a doctor’s appointment.  (The Sun, 2016)

Despite having her own morning television show, Greg says his sister never felt she was good enough – and was constantly doubting herself. “She was very gifted and she never felt like she was good enough and she was constantly doubting herself, and I mean morosely doubting herself,” says Greg. “And she would come out of it and she would be better and we would think with all the outside help with the professionals maybe this would be the time she would get her wind and be fine. But it just never really happened completely for her. It is a really sad, tragic circumstance.”  (People Magazine, 2016)

“My family adored my sister,” says Greg. “She was an interesting, gifted, flawed person.  She was flawed from the time she was a little girl. Emotionally flawed in many ways.”  (People Magazine, 2016)

[Chris] was a bright student who “used to make up words for things that didn’t have a word,” recalls Greg. “She just loved language.” … She had a lot of things that she was exceptionally good at and once she showed she could do it she lost interest and went on to the next thing.”  She was a “marvelous person and had this great sort of dry wit about her and a bit of a sharp tongue,” says Greg. But he adds, “She never felt like she fit in and in a sense she never did.”  (People Magazine, 2016)

“She was an ambitious reporter, good at her job, and liked by co-workers,” recalls former WXLT reporter Craig Sager.  “She was a unique person,” remembers friend Pauline Lunin. “She was different. It was the 70s and we were into folk things and the earth colors and she dressed in a bright way. I thought she was very talented.”  News director Gordon Galbraith recalls the quirky side of Christine: “Christine had a bizarre sense of humor,” he says. “She was 29 years-old and she had no problem admitting she was a virgin. So one afternoon, we were doing a mock newscast and because she had no qualms about being virginal at 29 she named herself ‘Pristine Buttocks.’ ‘I am Pristine Buttocks and here is the news.'” (People Magazine, 2016)

“I just thought [Tim] was brilliant and sophisticated and handsome and tall.  And Christine was like him.  The few times that I met her, very attractive, she had a very sophisticated demeanor.  She carried herself with a lot of poise, a lot of grace.”  -Former coworker of Tim Chubbuck (Kate Plays Christine, 2016)

“She was one of those people you could tell any joke to.”  -Gordon Galbraith (Kate Plays Christine, 2016)

“And I came out to her, being gay, and it was like, ‘No big deal, my brother’s gay.’  So I had someone to confide in.”  -Steve Newman (Kate Plays Christine, 2016)

“Craig [Shilowich] met a handful of [people who knew Chris] and he told me about what they said.  There were a couple of things that stood out in my memory. Most of them were things that alluded to the fact that they were incredibly in awe of her. That even though she was an incredibly difficult person and she was frightening and confusing, everyone sort of loved her on some strange level.”  -Rebecca Hall (Yahoo, 2016)

[Rob Smith] was spooked by how well the film [Christine] depicted what he had lived. “I was amazed by how you captured Christine,” he told Shilowich.  (the New Yorker, 2016)

“There was no romantic interest, we were just friends. We talked a lot, got along great. Funny lady, you know? But I have a warped sense of humor. I dug her. And, when she went into morbid land, I never took it seriously because she always started laughing.  I probably wasn’t mature enough to know she was trying to reach out.” -Rob “Smitty” Smith (the New Yorker, 2016)

“[A fake suicide] was something that Chris would do. I can see her doing a fake suicide more than anybody.” - Rob “Smitty” Smith (the New Yorker, 2016)

When Chris was 15, she wrote her autobiography.  In it she said: “…I hope to be able to become a lady with a little spice, a housewife, mother, and good friend to all of my acquaintances… But whatever I endeavor I shall try to make a go of it.  Because, if there is anything that leaves a sour taste in my mouth it’s failure.”  (Washington Post, Aug 4 1974)

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Christine Chubbuck: 29, Good-Looking, Educated, A Television Personality. Dead. Live and in Color. (1974)

Date: August 4, 1974 Publication: The Washington Post Author: Sally Quinn

Note: The complete newspaper article has been left intact, including the use of outdated terms or terms that are now considered offensive. This is for preservation purposes only. Punctuation errors have been corrected, and paragraphs have been reformatted for tumblr. I've also added custom section headings to keep things organized.

In Living Color

Christine Chubbuck flicked her long, dark hair back away from her face, swallowed, twitched her lips only slightly, and reached with her left hand to turn the next page of her script.  Looking down on the anchor desk she began to read: “In keeping with Channel 40’s policy of bringing you the latest in” – she looked up from the script, directly into the camera, and smiled a tentative smile.  Her voice took on a sarcastic tone as she emphasized “blood and guts…and in living color.”  She looked back down at her script.  Her left hand shook almost unnoticeably.  Her right arm stiffened.  “We bring you another first.”  Her voice was steady.  She looked up again into the camera.  Her eyes were dark, direct and challenging.  “An attempted suicide.”

Her right hand came up from under the anchor desk.  In it was a .38 caliber revolver.  She pointed it at the lower back of her head and pulled the trigger.  A loud crack was heard.  A puff of smoke blew out from the gun, and her hair flew up around her face as though a sudden gust of wind had caught it.  Her face took on a fierce, contorted look.  Her mouth wrenched downward; her head shook.  Then her body fell forward with a resounding thud against the anchor desk and slowly slipped out of sight.

Critical Condition

Hours later at the hospital, shortly before Christine Chubbuck died, her mother was interviewed by a local reporter.  “She was terribly, terribly, terribly depressed.  She had a job that she loved.  She said constantly that if it ended tomorrow, she would still be glad she had had it.  But she had nothing else in her social life.  No close friends, no romantic attachments or prospects of any.  She was a spinster at 29, and it bothered her.  She couldn’t register with people.  That’s the main thing.  She was very sensitive and she tried and she would reach out, you know, ‘Hi, how are you, won’t you come have a cup of coffee with me?’ and you say ‘no,’ but you don’t say, ‘Won’t you come have a cup of coffee with me,’ that sort of thing, in her personal people relationships, and it really got to her.  She’d been very depressed.  She’d been seeing a psychiatrist who didn’t really feel that she was that serious about not wanting to live.  She felt if you’ve tried as hard as you can, you’ve prepared yourself, you work hard, you reach your hand out to people, and nobody takes it, then there’s something wrong with your drumbeat, and she really felt she couldn’t register with anyone except her family.  And at 29, that’s sad.”

That Morning

Monday, July 15 was a routine day at Channel 40. Chris Chubbuck arrived about a half hour before the 9:30 morning talk show, Suncoast Digest.  She had a quick cup of coffee with her mother at their house on nearby Siesta Key, asked her mother to leave her chocolate poodle, Perspicacity, out because she’d be back at 10:45, jumped in her yellow Volkswagen convertible, “The Lemon,” and dashed off to the studio.  She looked particularly good that morning.  She had a tan, her waist-length black hair was clean and shiny and her black-and-white print dress complemented her long, slim figure.  She was in extraordinarily good spirits.

Her guest arrived and she showed him and his wife into the studio, then excused herself to write her script for the newscast.  This was a departure, and it puzzled the technical director, Linford Rickard, and the two camerawomen.  Chris normally opened her show in her interview area and conducted a rather informal half hour.  Never once had she opened her show with a newscast.  But Chris was so reliable and so professional that everyone figured she knew what she was doing.  She sat down at her typewriter, quickly wrote her 10-minute news script, told the control room that she wanted to use film of a shootout that weekend and took her place at the anchor desk across the room from her interview area.  She placed under the anchor desk a large bag of puppets she had made, which she occasionally brought with her to use on her broadcast, or to give a puppet show at a local hospital for mentally-retarded children.  Hidden in the bag was the .38 caliber pistol.

She told the two camerawomen that she would open with a short segment of news, then move over to her interview area.  She began with three items of national news, then led into a film piece about a local shooting at a restaurant the night before.  When she finished the lead-in, she waited for the film to come up, but nothing happened.

“I looked up and said to her, ‘Chris, the film’s not going to roll,’” said Jean Reed, one of the camerawomen, “and she just looked at me very levelly and said, ‘It isn’t going to roll.’ Then she just smiled as though she were terribly amused.  Normally she would have been furious and said, ‘Oh, this damn, two-bit outfit.’  But she just sat there calmly.  Then, when she went into that blood-and-guts thing, I thought, ‘What sick humor.’  And after she shot herself, I was furious and ran over to the anchor desk, fully expecting to see her lying on the floor doubled up with laughter.  But I saw her stretched out, blood running out of her nose and mouth, and her whole body twitching.  I said, ‘My God, she’s done it.  She’s shot herself.’”

On the desk, after Chris had been rushed to the hospital, a blood-soaked news story was found.  It was the story of her own suicide attempt, written in longhand.  It described the attempt, how she was taken to Sarasota Memorial Hospital, and it listed her in critical condition.

Hours after the shooting the story was on network radio, television and on front pages of newspapers all over the world.  “TV Star Kills Self,” “TV Personality Takes Own Life On Air,” “On-Camera Suicide,” read headlines of tabloids from Tokyo to London to Australia to the New York Daily News.  People were stunned.  Jack Ruby, George Wallace - a Vietcong prisoner - had all been shot before viewers’ eyes and it riveted the world.  But never in history had anyone deliberately killed herself on live television.  It was a first.  And it was Christine Chubbuck’s story.

"A Nifty Idea"

She left no suicide note.  A week before she died, she mentioned to Rob Smith, 22, the night news editor, that she had purchased a gun.  “What for?” asked Rob.  “Well, I thought it would be a nifty idea if I went on the air live and just blew myself away,” she answered, and the laughed her funny cackle. “I just changed the subject,” Smith said.  “That was just too sick a joke for me.”

Several weeks before she died, she told Mike Simmons, 26, the news director, that she wanted to do a film piece on suicide.  He gave her the go-ahead.  She called the local police department and discussed methods of suicide with one of the officers.  When Chris Chubbuck killed herself, she followed [his] instructions.

There seemed to be no doubt that she had every intention of killing herself.  There were some who were confused by the word “attempted” suicide in her script.  But those who worked with her had a ready explanation.  Chris was too good a newswoman to write suicide when it might have failed.  She was too precise.  Even her mother thought it was not unusual.  “Chris was hedging her bets,” she said.

So once it had been established that she fully intended to die, obviously the question became, “Why?”  And of course, “Why did she choose to do it the way she did?”  Everyone agrees that her sexual status was a manifestation of the problems she had in relating to people.  Chris would have been 30 on Aug. 24, and she was still a virgin.  She made no secret of it to her family, her friends and her coworkers.  But to say that she killed herself for this reason would be simplistic.

"Gorgeous George"

She had worked for nearly a year with a young man named George Peter Ryan, a tall, handsome, blond stockbroker who read the stock reports on the local news show.  George (“Gorgeous George” to some of his friends) was divorced and had had personal problems himself.  He was heavily involved in transactional analysis.  Chris developed a crush on him.  In fact, she confided to one of her friends that she had decided George was the perfect person to help her solve her problems.  She went to George on his 30th birthday in late June with a cake.  And later, at a press party, she made it clear to him in a subtle way that she was available.  He rejected her.

Andrea Kirby

Chris’s closest friend, if she had one, was Andrea Kirby.  Andrea, 32, was the sports reporter for Channel 40.  She was southern, petite, divorced and had a way with men.  Andrea was also tough and ambitious.

Andrea recently had been hired by a Baltimore TV station and was leaving Sarasota in a few days.  That depressed Chris somewhat because she saw her friend leaving and going on to bigger and better things while she was left behind.  It was Andrea to whom Chris confided her plan to proposition George.  Andrea had no patience with Chris’s tendency to feel sorry for herself.  Occasionally she would say, “That’s right, Chris.  Just kick yourself.”  What she didn’t say was that she and George were already seeing each other.  “When Chris found out that George and I were going out, that depressed her,” Andrea said.

Robert “Bob” Nelson

The owner of station WXLT-TV is Robert Nelson.  He had owned radio stations in the area and three years ago had started this new channel, an ABC affiliate.  The station was getting off to a slow start.  Equipment was old, staff was small, very young and inexperienced.  Everybody did everything. They concentrated on the more sensational news in the area: violence, crime, accidents; “blood and guts,” as Chris often would put it.  Channel 40, sometimes referred to as Funny Forty, estimates its highest viewing audience at 10,000 sets.  In season.

Chris’s program had ratings of 500 homes.  In season, maybe 1,000.  She was not by any means a “big TV star.”  She wanted to be.  She wanted to be recognized and was hard-working, diligent, and competent.

Her friends and family say she hated Nelson, because she thought he seemed unconcerned with the quality of the station.  She complained often about what she saw as the number of tasteless and violent stories on the air, about the station’s pandering, in her opinion, to its advertisers, and about the low pay.  When she died, she was making little more than $5,000 a year.  That was for putting on a morning talk show, doing sometimes four or five stories a day and occasionally working on weekends anchoring the evening news.  She was bitter about the fact that Nelson seemed to want only those who would work for the least amount of money, not those who were the most talented.

Chris’s suicide put station WXLT-TV on the map.  Nelson proudly showed his collections of clippings about it to a visitor.  “We got the whole front page of The Daily News,” he boasted.

“Tantrums”

On the Friday night before Chris killed herself, she had a terrible fight with Mike Simmons, the news director, about her story being cut in favor of a shoot-out.  “She was very emotional, would get unusually upset about these things,” said Simmons.  “She would, well, throw tantrums a lot.”  A week earlier, she had thrown a terrible tantrum when the director placed a bouquet of plastic flowers on her interview table.  In front of her guest, a state politician, she had flung the flowers across the studio, screaming, “I won’t have these damned things in my studio.”  Everyone was a little unnerved by that scene.

Alone

She had very few dates in the past months.  When she had invited men, several times, to have dinner, they had accepted, then not even bothered to show up or call.  “I don’t think Chris had more than 25 dates in the last 10 years,” her mother said.

Last summer she had had an ovary removed.  The doctors told her then that if she didn’t have children within the next two or three years, she probably never would.  And, of course, there were no prospects.

She had no real friends.  She was a strange combination of someone who wanted, needed desperately, the support and friendship of others, and in another way rejected others out of a sense of defensive pride.  Her initial image was one of a self-confident, totally contained, together young woman.  She would seem haughty, distant, standoffish, really.  Yet when people began to know her, she evidenced such a crying need for a completely committed relationship that it drove them away for fear they couldn’t give her what she wanted.

“There was a haunting melody in Chris,” Mrs. Chubbuck said.  “She gave so many presents, spent so much money, not to buy their friendship…but because she wanted to.  It’s almost like her life was a little out of gear with other people.  She was the only person I ever knew who would walk into a room and every head would turn…yet nobody ever came over and asked for her phone number.  It’s been like that since she was 13.”

Siesta Key

Chris Chubbuck lived at home with her mother and her older brother, Timothy, 32, an interior decorator.  But it wasn’t the usual situation of a 29-year-old “spinster” living at home.  She had left a small town in Ohio and moved into her family’s summer home on Siesta Key.

Two years later, her parents were divorced, and her mother moved down.  Her younger brother, Greg, 28, later came down and began to work in contracting. Last year, Timothy developed mononucleosis and moved down from Boston to live in the guest cottage, replacing Greg, who had become engaged.

“It’s sort of like an adult commune,” Mrs. Chubbuck said.  “Everybody thinks it’s a little odd, we know that, but it’s a nice arrangement for us.  We all have our own privacy.”

The Chubbuck Family

Mrs. Chubbuck is 53. She has shoulder-length grey hair and a round, open, friendly face, carefully made up over her tan.  She describes herself as a “53-year-old hippie who’s with it.”  Her conduct throughout the whole suicide episode had been exemplary. Too exemplary, some thought.  “That’s a tough cookie,” people would remark.

“Peg” Chubbuck had not shown any emotion in public, and some people thought perhaps her coldness might have had something to do with her daughter’s reasons for killing herself.  She talked to a visitor about Chris and herself and their family exactly one week after her daughter died.  She seemed composed; she could laugh and talk calmly.

Yet once, when she was asked about her composure in the face of such a horrible event, her eyes filled with tears and she said, “I know what people are saying.  But we’re very private people.  We grieve privately.  Chris threw us into a public position.  She knew we could handle our sorrow.  But we refused to wear our hearts on our sleeves.  Those who think I haven’t cried should see my swollen tear ducts.”

Chris’s brother Timothy is artistic and creative, and it was Timothy who decorated the house they live in, all very tasteful and House-And-Garden in pinks and greens.  He helped Chris with her bedroom, a yellow-and-white checked room with a small, single bed in a corner with ruffled curtains around the bed posts.  It looked more like the room of a young girl than the room of a 29-year-old, 5-foot-9 woman.

Greg, more an all-American boy, described himself as Chris’s second best friend.  Her mother was “her best friend, who just happened to be her mother.”

Foreshadowing

On the Saturday before Chris Chubbuck killed herself, Greg and his fiancée visited her house to use the washing machine.  She told him that she was terribly depressed and that she didn’t think she was going to be able to cope with life anymore.  “I’m thinking about killing myself, and I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do,” she told him.  “Do you want to talk about it?” Greg asked her.  “No, let’s not.  We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“I would have discounted it if she had said it to me,” her brother Tim said.  “She’d said it before.”

“We’d all heard it,” her mother said.  “I think it was always serious.  I’ve always known it might happen.”

“But she always said it in an offhand way,” Tim said.

“But everything she said was offhand,” her mother said.

“I always thought,” Greg said, “in my own mind, that she was intelligent and would find a way to carry herself through.  In the course of the last two or three years I’d had that conversation with her many times.  I didn’t think of it as an active thing.  I thought of it as something she wanted to talk about.

“Besides, her mood seemed up Saturday and Sunday,” he said.  She baked a cake.  She improved her tan.”

“I guess she was putting her house in order,” said her mother.

“You know, she’s always talked about it.  ‘If life gets too tough, I’ll get out.  If I can’t handle it, I’ll leave.’  It was her decision, and she decided that it was all just too much for her. Whether anybody else thought it wasn’t - well, it was.”

“It was a recurrent conversation,” said Tim.  “In times of real downness, it seemed to her a real solution for escape.  We gave it credence.”

“We thought it possible because there wasn’t anything in her life,” said her mother.  “If someone asked me a few weeks ago if it was possible, I would have said “yes”.  For her, it was the only way out.”

“I don’t think any intelligent person hasn’t viewed it as an alternative,” said Greg.  “But in her case it always became a serious alternative.”

“We didn’t ignore it,” said her mother.

“It was kind of interfamily therapy in a way,” said Tim.  “Suicide had been discussed a lot from everyone’s point of view.”

Wine and Roses

Chris’s family is a well-to-do, upper-middle-class family from Hudson, Ohio, where her father, now remarried, is a businessman.  All of the children had been sent to private schools. After Laurel School for Girls, Chris had gone to Ohio State University and graduated from Boston University in broadcasting and film.

Since college, she had had many TV jobs with small stations, but never on-camera work until she arrived at Channel 40 last August.  It was shortly after that, to fulfill FCC employment regulations, she was given the morning talk show.

Even in high school, according to her mother, she had formed the “Dateless Wonder” club for girls who didn’t have dates on Saturday night.

“She often referred to herself as someone who still believed in wine and roses, being sent flowers and called up for a date.  But she would go through periods of two or three years where nobody would even ask her out for a hotdog.  You’ve got to learn to crawl before you walk, and Chris never even had a crawling relationship with anybody.  She never had more than two dates with anyone in her life.

“She really wanted to find someone to love and get married.  It was much more important to her than her job.  She used to say that even a bad relationship is better than none. Her 30th birthday would have been Aug. 24, and she would have been officially an old maid.  It bothered her like hell.  If you look at it on paper,” her mother said, “her suicide was simply because her personal life was not enough.”

George Peter Ryan

When George Peter Ryan first heard about Chris’s suicide, he was not surprised.  But he felt angry; angry that she had discounted his friendship.  “I was suicidal two years ago, and I got into transactional analysis, a form of group therapy,” he said.  (In fact, he brought his “T.A.” group leader to the second interview to analyze his reactions to the questions.)  “I tried to get Chris interested in that.  I tried to talk to her.  I wanted to tell her how important it was to be able to talk to someone from the standpoint of honesty.  But she didn’t believe anyone wanted to be her friend.  But I was made aware she had a crush on me.  On my birthday, I think Chris had set out to plan to take control of her life, and she was going to do it her way.  She never said she wanted to be my friend.  I only know what people tell me.  She never told me anything, I just know that I didn’t want to get involved that way.  I had the feeling that she demanded more than I could give.   I didn’t know until after she shot herself that she was a virgin.”

Six months ago, Ryan, admittedly, was a mess and Chris hated him.  He thought she was “a liberated woman, a pain-in-the-ass, not very attractive, almost manly.  She was doing a man’s job, only doing it better than a man.  She was precise and efficient.  There was nothing feminine about her.”  But once he started “T.A.”, he improved, and so did his opinion of Chris, and hers of him.  “She was two different people, really.  Sometimes she was really together, her posture and carriage, and just the way she said “hello”, were different.  She was a methodical and efficient career girl, a Germaine Greer, a Gloria Steinem.  There was an ‘I can handle it… but not really’ air about her.  Other times, her posture was rotten; she made no effort to look attractive, she would put herself down, she had this poor-little-me, kick-me attitude.”

It was only on the Thursday before she died that Ryan found Chris totally changed.  “I went into the studio and she was flirting and, well, smug, really - almost patronizing.  And she was never patronizing.  She came and sat on my lap and we joked about my being horny.  She was really, really together.  I couldn’t believe it was the same person, especially after our encounter a few weeks before.  The next night, I wanted to ask her out, but her attitude was ‘don’t touch me.’  I couldn’t understand.  I told her then, ‘I really like you; I want you to know you’re okay,’ but she just brushed me off.  I felt discounted.  I felt badly about it.  Now I realize that she’d already made her decision to die.  Her decision had been made.  She’d found the answer and she didn’t need to feel afraid of me anymore.

Yes, But…

To Andrea Kirby, Chris was a woman who had a lot going for her but couldn’t get it together.  “In the last few weeks before she died, she had turned into a ‘yes, but’ person,” Andrea said.  “She became a sniveling, self-pitying creature at the end, and I really lost patience with her.  I thought that if I got mad at her, she would be able to pull herself out of it.  She discounted me as a friend so many times, and other people, too.  But I had the feeling that if she had friends, she wouldn’t have been able to say she wasn’t a success.  Every time she’d be hurt by someone, she could chalk another one up.  If you didn’t call her or do something positive with her, she’d think you didn’t like her.  I think she killed herself to say, ‘Hey, look at me,’ to get attention, to be recognized.  And I think she wanted marriage and children more than anything else.  She said to me once, ‘I would like to have just for one week, somebody I really loved, who really loved me.’  Her only trouble was that she came on so heavy, so intense.  Her way of covering up her insecurities was to be physically confident.  That was just her manner.”

Andrea and Chris were dining out the night Chris told Andrea her plan to get George.  “She was so excited about her great plan.  George had, before the last six months, been too aggressive for her, and she couldn’t stand him.  But as he changed, so did her opinion of him.  And she wasn’t cool about it.  I don’t think she could have handled an affair with George.  She would have held anyone she had an affair with responsible.  And I think men sensed that.”

Jean Reed

Jean Reed, 54, the camerawoman who was working the morning Chris committed suicide, has mixed feelings about her.  They were friendly and occasionally would have dinner together.  It was at those dinners that Chris confided many of her problems.  “She told me,” Jean said, “that she had tried to kill herself four years ago with pills.  She said she’d had a hard life.  In my view, she was very self-centered.  Hers were the only important problems.  She was constantly aware of how people reacted to her, immediately read things into what they said to her - but it was not a two-way street.

“She talked about her suicide attempt a lot.  She was threatened by everyone.  I once tried to do an interview, and she got furious.  And they let Shay Taylor, the other camerawoman, do one, and Chris hit the roof.  She even thought Miss Florida was going to take over her job when somebody suggested she do the weather.

“She needed encouragement or support and we all tried to compliment her on what she was doing.  She dearly loved a kind word, but she put other people down without flashing an eye.”

Jean Reed describes Chris as an elegant dresser, as someone with talent and someone you could have a good time with, a good laugh with.  “She had a great sense of the absurd, almost a macabre sense of humor.  And of course, she adored to laugh about Nelson.  She did not like the unexpected.  She insisted on being well-prepared at all times.

“She had begun toward the end to make nasty remarks about her guests.  She said to me, ‘I’m getting sick of these people.  They’re all using me.  The only thing they want out of me is to be on my show, and I resent it.’  The funny thing about that was, she was using them too, because they were good guests.  But she would never think of things that way.”

Shay Taylor

Shay Taylor, the 24-year-old camerawoman, felt that Chris displayed her insecurity by being standoffish, masculine, and occasionally using crude language in front of her male guests, apparently to turn them off deliberately.  “If she met an attractive man or had a good-looking male guest that I knew she was interested in,” said Shay, “she’d always tell them that they ought to take me out.”

Bones To Pick

“I make it a policy of not maintaining a close social relationship with any of my employees,” said Robert Nelson, the owner of WXLT-TV.  “But the spring when Chris invited us to an open house at her mother’s, we went.  I was amazed at the number of VIPs there.  Everything seemed to be going perfectly, and Chris was the center of attention.  But quite frankly, people who live on the beach, on Siesta Key, are just different from the rest of us.  They’re more bohemian.  They have a different lifestyle from us who are more urbanized.  Chris fit into that category.”

Nelson, a small man with dark skin, a round face and thin lips, had some bones to pick with Chris.  “She wasn’t as interested in hard news as she was in features and didn’t distinguish as she should between them.  She had her own system of priorities.  I asked her once to interview a prominent businessman, a restauranteur who was getting an award.  She didn’t do it, and I got a little uptight and asked the news director why.

“He said Chris felt her program should not be a vehicle for every commercial enterprise in the community.  I explained that he was an interesting man, but frankly, I own and operate this business, and I didn’t have to explain to her.”

Bob Keehn

Bob Keehn, the anchorman for the evening news, was along with the Nelsons during this conversation over dinner.  Keehn and his wife own an advertising agency, Ad Infinitem, representing retail clients, banks, department stores, and automobile dealers in the community.

Keehn liked Chris Chubbuck.  “She had a protective coloration,” he said, “what might appear to some to be no need for friends.  I felt she was someone with very deep feelings.  Someone who seemed more involved with her job and with her emotions than most people seem to be.  She had a little more depth than most people.  What seemed to concern her was her involvement with the human condition.  She would express a negative reaction to people and the way they treated each other.  One thing about her, though, she was always self-deprecating.  Always.  She seemed so hangdog that I’d always compliment her purposefully.  And she’d always put down the compliment.”

"A Grossly Public Act"

Though virtually no one seemed shocked by the fact that Christine Chubbuck decided to take her own life, there were many who were stunned by the method she used to take it – including her mother.  “I would have thought she would have swum out in the ocean as far as she could go.  She was an extraordinarily strong swimmer.  She could have gone three or four miles.  The water was her friend.  It could easily have been her final resting place.”

But Chris didn’t swim out as far as she could go.  She committed a grossly public act, one that, in its way, reverberated around the world and left those behind to deal with the reason why.

“I think,” said her mother, “she was saying, ‘Look, world, I’ve been here all along.  How about a date Saturday night?’  But her last act was the most selfish thing she ever did.  She brough her death into other people’s homes.  I think she did it because she felt the station was a showcase for blood and guts, and a last statement, if you will, that ‘I have been here.’”

"I think she expected the film of her death to be shown on the networks," said Tim.

“I think she did, too,” said Greg.  “To draw attention to her life.  But I can think of nothing more grotesque than seeing a beautiful young woman blow her brains out on TV.”

Speculation

Mike Simmons, the news director, felt Chris did it because she wanted the film to be aired internationally.  “I think it was a last cry for recognition to all the people she had helped, reached out to, and who hadn’t reached back out.  She was saying, ‘I was here - not just Sarasota - but I was here, world.’  If you do it on TV, nobody’s ever done it before.  And Chris, being the professional newswoman that she was, always wanted us to have the story first.  We weren’t even on the map before this happened.  Now they know we’re here.  Perhaps it was her way of trying to help us along.”

Bob Keehn sees it differently.  “I think she was saying, ‘Is this what you want, folks, this blood and guts?  Well, here it is.  See how stupid and horrible it is.  Is this what you really want?’”

Fifteen Minutes

Rob Smith, the 22-year-old night news editor, was closest to Chris at the station.  He liked her a great deal and she would confide in him.  He thought she was bright and talented and professional, but he was horrified by the way she killed herself and found it very uncharacteristic.

“It was a really bad thing she did,” he said.  “If you want to kill yourself, you shouldn’t drag others down.  I guess she was just going to do it all at one time.  Everybody was going to know her, and she was going to be a household word.  It wasn’t worth it to her to put in all those years, to get where she wanted to get, and put up with her private life.  This way she got there and ended all her problems.  Chris and I talked once about the fact that Andy Warhol said that everyone will be famous for 15 minutes in their lives.  This was her 15 minutes.”

When Chris was 15, she wrote her autobiography.  In it she said: “…I hope to be able to become a lady with a little spice, a housewife, mother, and good friend to all of my acquaintances… But whatever I endeavor I shall try to make a go of it.  Because, if there is anything that leaves a sour taste in my mouth it’s failure.”

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Chris's senior portrait page from the 1962 Laurel School yearbook.

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Pictures featuring Chris Chubbuck from the 1962 Laurel School yearbook.

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Pictures featuring Chris Chubbuck from the 1961 Laurel School yearbook.

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Pictures featuring Chris Chubbuck from the 1960 Laurel School yearbook.