Six months after slaying of teacher, life in Lyle goes on

By Bill McAuliffe
Southern Minnesota Correspondent

Lyle, Minn.
Lyle was busy Friday afternoon.

At school, preparartions for Saturday's Sweetheart Ball were suspended so that a couple busloads of kids could travel to Bricelyn for a basketball doubleheader. Down the street, at the American Legion hall, chairs were being set up for a televised cancer benefit. And in a commons room of the silent, snowed-in Our Savior's Church, the Rev. Harold Luke was thinking golf, socking plastic balls down a linoleum fairway toward some distant imaginary green.

It was nearly six months to the day since the murder of teacher Sharon Turnbull. But Lyle wasn't looking back.

"The only time I hear people asking about it is if there's something in the paper about it, or a reporter comes around asking." said School Superintendent Tom Lubovich. "It's way on the back burner. People have got to go on living."

Lubovich's sentiments were common in Lyle, especially after a judge issued his verdict in the case. Harold Krieger ruled Monday that a 14-year-old Lyle boy committed first-degree murder in the shooting of Turnbull, 33, as she sat in her living room Aug. 6.

"I know in the beginning people were just plain scared," Luecke said. "They were speaking with fear, and anger, too. There's no doubt people are still up tight about it. But if anything, it's rallied people together more. There might have been some people who might have said, 'Hey, let's get out of here.' But it hasn't happened at all."

Some Lyle residents are indeed working to improve things. Before Christmas about 50 people formed a community action committee; pairs of adults now walk the streets at night checking for potential crime spots. And Lyle residents have contributed more than $1,100 to a Turnbull memorial fund.

But people in Lyle say they still have some distance to go in clearing its reputation. The juvenile hearing following the murder saw Lyle painted publicly as a town in which school children routinely uttered death threats against teachers, a town with a serious vandalism problem, and a town which blended hatred with neighborliness.

"If you're in another town wearing a Lyle coat, other people see it as a sign to leave," said Dale Svoboda, a high school junior and a football player. "During the season everybody was calling us names out on the field. It might have helped- it made people mad out there."

Most say they believe that Lyle was a victim of exaggeration in court testimony. Lubovich, who supervised revision of the student handbook this year, said he would invite anyone to take a look at how orderly the school is. Rachel Hudson, president of the Lyle teachers' association, a 17-year music teacher who was a close friend of Turnbull's, said: "There aren't any kids here I'd call bad." Don Ransom, who has driven a Lyle school bus for 20 years, said he has never had any serious problems.

Charles Ekle, one of a handful of downtown workers who are taking a coffee break in the Copper Kettle Cafe yesterday afternoon, also defended Lyle. "I'd say a lot that was said was exaggeration, " he said, "I don't know if Minneapolis would be any better. I just read about some trouble up there the other day."

Still, some residents are concerned about a recent rash of threatening phone calls. And two house burglaries on a recent weekend, in spite of the community watch program, seem to have people nervous.

Hudson summed up the struggle in Lyle over the past six months this way:

"It's hard, really emotionally hard, when you know both parties," she said, "But I think basically that people are just trying to pick up the pieces. It's all they can do. Everybody will help each other- and that's one good thing about a small town."

Staff Photo by Tom Sweeney

Lyle High School junior Dale Svoboda, center, with schoolmates John Perry, left, and Steve Orth: "During the season everybody was calling us names out on the (football) field. It might have helped- it made people mad..."