As no place is immune to the reality of random mass murder, the fact that Binghamton, New York is the latest city to become identified with this phenomenon doesn't surprise me but it makes me deeply sad as  I was a resident of that town when I was a college student at SUNY-Binghamton in the late 1970's.

Now Binghamton will be remembered as a place where a man murdered 14 people in an American citizenship class. As I watched the images on television of the American Civic Association on Front Street, memories flooded back of that upstate city that was my playground during and after my college days.

As students at SUNY-Binghamton, many of us lived off-campus and traveled on a brightly painted school bus from the campus to various sections of that town that are now in the news like Johnson City with its1930's archway that says "The Square Deal Town;" Downtown Binghamton with its churches, American Legion Halls and legendary Salvation Army, where in the early 1980's you could still find vintage clothing from the 1930's; the West Side of Binghamton, where many students lived in Victorian houses on streets named for German composers (Beethoven, Schiller, Mozart). We joked that residents pronounced Beethoven Street: Beeth Oven but now I'm not even sure if that was true or just college kids being patronizing about the townies.

Now because of this tragedy, Binghamton will become iconic in a nation that has seen too many of these mass murders, most recently at  Virgina Tech where 32 college students were killed. Early reports said that the killer, Jiverly Wong, a Vietnamese immigrant, had been laid off from IBM. That resonated with me, too. I had a summer job during college at IBM, which is one of the biggest employers in the area. 

At one time, IBM was the economic engine of Binghamton and its presence was inextricably linked to the city's economic fate. Through much of the 20th century, Binghamton was a manufacturing town. In the 1970's there were many empty red brick factory buildings that evoked an earlier industrial time. One in particular had entrances marked for girls and boys from back before child labor laws I guess.

In my moody walks and bike rides around Binghamton, a town at the confluence of the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers, I explored many of its nooks and crannies. Back then there was the American Dance Asylum, a dance school and performance space run by Bill T Jones and Arnie Zane in an old YMCA. There were antique shops and yard sales galore and its where I developed my interest in old photographs and 3-D stereo-views. There was the Roberson Museum and Science Center and  the Kopernik Observatory, one of the largest public observatories in the world, great dining car diners, and a small arena where it was fun to see the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Jackson Brown and the Ringling Brothers Circus when it came to town.

A great place to wander around with a super-8 movie camera, Binghamton is where I learned to appreciate the charm of a faded lost America that in the 1970's still had one foot in the 19th century and one in the 20th, especially in its mysterious abandoned rail yards and down-on-their luck neighborhoods.

Some people say Binghamton is just depressing town in western New York state. But I know better. It has charming house-proud neighborhoods with gardens and lilac bushes that bloom fragrantly in the spring. The autumn foliage is nonpareil and it has real old diners and funky Irish bars where they sell green beer on St. Patrick's Day.

Like any city it's had it hard times and its boom. This is one of the bad times. My heart goes out to that city of my youth and the families who lost loved ones in this  tragedy.