Opinion: The children of Chowchilla

This Sunday, a CNN documentary will air about the July 15, 1976, Chowchilla Kidnapping of 26 Dairyland Elementary School children. The kids were between the ages of 5 to 15 years.

Those old bandages of a lot of people are being ripped off to expose the wounds of the Madera County Chowchilla kidnapping, again. I cannot imagine the individual horrors and scars so many people involved still have to this day. They will never forget the terror inflicted on them.

Frank Edward Ray, the bus driver in the biggest kidnapping story in history, often came into the Berenda Ranch Restaurant for a glass of iced tea that summer before picking up his charges. He was friendly and well-liked.