Ben E Lou
08-01-2004, 06:17 AM
(From this morning's AJC. I'm out of town right now so I'm reading online. Based on the placement at the web site, I'm thinking this is on the front page. Can someone in Atlanta confirm?)
Through pain, a grieving wife and mother holds on to the good
By BILL OSINSKI ([email protected])
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/31/04
In the garage of the house that Billy Venable was building for his family, some metal reinforcement rods were sticking too far out of a concrete wall.
So he bent each rod back with his bare hands.
<!--endclickprintinclude--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width=175 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/B/03/98/99/image_799983.jpg (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable1.html)
CHARLOTTE B. TEAGLE/AJC STAFF
(ENLARGE) (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable1.html)
</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>As Susan Venable copes with the death of her husband, Billy, and their son, Bill, 17, in a home invasion, she has resumed playing the piano.
</TD></TR><TR><TD>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/B/00/98/99/image_799980.jpg (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable5.html)
FAMILY PHOTO/SPECIAL
(ENLARGE) (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable5.html)
</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Billy Venable, in a family photo with son Stephen, was killed by an intruder on Jan. 13.
</TD></TR><TR><TD>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/B/01/98/99/image_799981.jpg (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable4.html)
FAMILY PHOTO/SPECIAL
(ENLARGE) (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable4.html)
</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>A family photo shows Susan Venable with her son Bill, who was killed when he came to the aid of his father at their Lilburn home. Their assailant was killed later the same night by police.
</TD></TR><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width=170 bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle width=170 bgColor=#cccccc><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=10 width=168 bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=148>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/08/26/62/image_262268.gifEMAIL THIS (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/01venable.html#)
http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/03/27/62/image_262273.gifPRINT THIS (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/01venable.html#)
http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/04/27/62/image_262274.gifMOST POPULAR (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/01venable.html#)
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD><TD width=5>http://www.ajc.com/shared-local/images/1pix_trans.gif</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--startclickprintinclude-->
He had a football line coach's strength, but he also wanted the new house to have all the gentle touches that his wife, Susan, wanted. He built bookshelves into the wall on the second-floor landing for her reading space; he dug a pond in her garden.
When they moved in nearly 18 years ago, their plan was to raise the four children of their blended family, then spend the rest of their lives together in their Lilburn home.
Billy Venable died in his house, but in a way no one could have planned.
On the night of Jan. 13, a stranger with a gun pushed his way into the Venable home. There was a struggle, a burst of gunfire, and Billy Venable, 55, and his 17-year-old son Bill — who had tried to come to his father's aid — were both killed.
"Billy was so strong," Susan Venable said. "He could have snapped that young man's neck, but he didn't. That wouldn't have been him."
The gunman, Terry James Chaney, 19, of Lilburn was killed later the same night in nearby woods in an exchange of gunfire with police. A police investigation concluded that the home invasion was a random act, with robbery the most likely motive.
Afterward, it took the efforts of friends and family to turn the place from a crime scene back into a home.
And as the house has been restored, Susan Venable's healing has progressed.
"A house becomes something organic," she said. "It's not just a place where you live."
Her reasons for wanting to stay, she said, are simple: "Billy built this house for me."
When he was building the house in 1986, Billy Venable had left coaching and teaching to work in his family's contracting company. He and Susan had been married about four years. Their daughter, Amy, was 2. Their son, Bill, was born while the house was going up.
Billy's son Stephen, from a first marriage, was about 12, and Susan's son from her first marriage, Eddie Steele, was about 8. Eddie spent most summers and some holiday seasons with the Venables.
They chose the lot partly because they considered the Lilburn subdivision established and secure.
Susan, a language teacher at Trickum Middle School in Lilburn, chose the house plans. She wanted plenty of window seats, where she and the children could sit and read. She wanted a porthole window in the family room, with a view of her garden.
Billy Venable did all the plumbing himself and subcontracted much of the other work. Nearly every day they would go to the lot to measure the progress of the construction.
Treehouse still popular
At many stages, Billy would seek his wife's input, asking things like, "Susie, do you want a tray ceiling in here?"
The garden was perhaps her favorite spot. Working there at twilight on a summer evening was "pure heaven," she said. She recalls Billy teasing her about how her garden kept growing. " 'I won't have any lawn left to mow,' " he would say.
When she said she wanted a pond for the garden, her stepson Stephen started the work. Billy finished it the next day.
When her son Eddie wanted a treehouse, Billy consulted with him on the architectural specifications, and then he built it. Neighborhood kids still like to play there.
A few years after they moved in, Billy returned to his first love, coaching high school football and wrestling. Working long days on football fields was not easy for him; he was allergic to grass.
Susan describes herself as a watchful mother. She didn't like her children riding their bikes beyond where she could see them. "All my life, protecting my children has been my No. 1 focus," she said.
On the day of the shootings, Susan canceled plans to visit relatives in Alabama. Billy told her the drive might be too taxing for her to make alone.
The change in plans gave her some extra time with her son. She picked Bill up at school. Later, they went out and bought sandwiches, brought them home and ate together.
Bill went to bed early that night.
Cleanup by volunteers
As soon as the police tape was pulled away from the Venables' front door, people came to clean the house. The volunteers consisted of dozens of men and women — most of them friends from Tucker High School, where Billy Venable was the offensive line coach for the Tigers' football team.
They cleaned and repainted the walls of the foyer and the stairwell. They put in a new front door, replacing the one splintered by a bullet.
Bill Ballard, the head football coach and one of the organizers, said the cleanup was "the least we could do."
Ed Winterstein, a longtime friend of Billy Venable's, said, "Billy would've been at my house doing this, if it had been me." He recalled that he was one of the many friends for whom Billy Venable had installed water heaters.
The cleaning crew labored for three days. Then Susan Venable returned home.
"It was like coming into the house when we first moved in," she said.
Stephen Venable, now an attorney in Los Angeles, said he had mixed emotions about his stepmother's decision to stay in the home, concerned that the emotional strain of the violence might overwhelm all the good memories.
"But she made a decision early on that she wasn't going to let that happen," he said.
The line at the visitation for Billy and Bill Venable stretched out the church sanctuary, through the vestibule and adjoining hallway and deep into a church school building nearby. Susan Venable spent more than six hours receiving condolences.
During that time, she got word that one of Chaney's relatives was outside the chapel. She asked one of her sons to meet with him. The man expressed his sorrow for the family's loss. Susan Venable was grateful.
A daughter's care
Susan Venable returned to work a few weeks after the killings. She mostly got through those times in what she called her "robot state."
Her students, though, seemed to be putting in extra effort for her sake.
"My French class last term was the best I've ever taught," she said.
During spring break, the Venable home received another infusion of compassion and elbow grease.
Susan Venable's daughter, Amy, then a sophomore at the University of Georgia, helped organize a work crew of fellow members of the interdenominational Young Life group on campus.
"They took me on as their mission project," Susan said.
For most of a weekend, more than 40 students and a few adults worked to spruce up the Venables' home. They did landscaping work. They cleared two Dumpsters' worth of junk out of the basement. They repainted most of the interior walls of the house.
A few of the volunteers were Susan's former students. One of them found his eighth-grade French textbook amid the trash.
Learning to cope
Joanna Peeler, a Dunwoody-based psychologist who specializes in cases of trauma and crisis, said it is typical for survivors of such events to be permanently changed.
"They'll never be the same person again," Peeler said. "You don't get over a major tragedy, but you can learn to deal with it."
Susan Venable is dealing with her losses by trying to stay connected with friends and family. She goes out to dinner about once a week with a group of neighborhood friends. And she has an especially close friend whom she talks to almost daily. She is in contact with her children just about every day.
She said she also has experienced a renewal and deepening of her faith. In her search for meaning, she said she finds particular comfort in Psalm 84:5. "Blessed are they who find strength in [God] . . . as they pass through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs."
Earlier this summer, Venable and a friend went to Guatemala, where they took an intensive course in Spanish. She also went to Los Angeles, where Stephen Venable ran a leg of the Olympic Torch Relay as a tribute to his father and stepbrother.
Now, Susan Venable is preparing for a new school year. And if she's up to it, she said she might even pop up at a Tucker Tigers' game some Friday night.
She also has resumed playing the piano, an instrument she had enjoyed as a teenager.
And when she plays in the foyer, the house that Billy built fills with music.
Through pain, a grieving wife and mother holds on to the good
By BILL OSINSKI ([email protected])
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/31/04
In the garage of the house that Billy Venable was building for his family, some metal reinforcement rods were sticking too far out of a concrete wall.
So he bent each rod back with his bare hands.
<!--endclickprintinclude--><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width=175 align=left border=0><TBODY><TR><TD>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/B/03/98/99/image_799983.jpg (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable1.html)
CHARLOTTE B. TEAGLE/AJC STAFF
(ENLARGE) (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable1.html)
</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>As Susan Venable copes with the death of her husband, Billy, and their son, Bill, 17, in a home invasion, she has resumed playing the piano.
</TD></TR><TR><TD>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/B/00/98/99/image_799980.jpg (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable5.html)
FAMILY PHOTO/SPECIAL
(ENLARGE) (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable5.html)
</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>Billy Venable, in a family photo with son Stephen, was killed by an intruder on Jan. 13.
</TD></TR><TR><TD>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/B/01/98/99/image_799981.jpg (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable4.html)
FAMILY PHOTO/SPECIAL
(ENLARGE) (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/Venable4.html)
</TD></TR><TR><TD class=caption>A family photo shows Susan Venable with her son Bill, who was killed when he came to the aid of his father at their Lilburn home. Their assailant was killed later the same night by police.
</TD></TR><TR><TD><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=1 width=170 bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD align=middle width=170 bgColor=#cccccc><TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=10 width=168 bgColor=#ffffff border=0><TBODY><TR><TD width=148>http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/08/26/62/image_262268.gifEMAIL THIS (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/01venable.html#)
http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/03/27/62/image_262273.gifPRINT THIS (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/01venable.html#)
http://img.coxnewsweb.com/C/04/27/62/image_262274.gifMOST POPULAR (http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/0804/01venable.html#)
</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE></TD><TD width=5>http://www.ajc.com/shared-local/images/1pix_trans.gif</TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!--startclickprintinclude-->
He had a football line coach's strength, but he also wanted the new house to have all the gentle touches that his wife, Susan, wanted. He built bookshelves into the wall on the second-floor landing for her reading space; he dug a pond in her garden.
When they moved in nearly 18 years ago, their plan was to raise the four children of their blended family, then spend the rest of their lives together in their Lilburn home.
Billy Venable died in his house, but in a way no one could have planned.
On the night of Jan. 13, a stranger with a gun pushed his way into the Venable home. There was a struggle, a burst of gunfire, and Billy Venable, 55, and his 17-year-old son Bill — who had tried to come to his father's aid — were both killed.
"Billy was so strong," Susan Venable said. "He could have snapped that young man's neck, but he didn't. That wouldn't have been him."
The gunman, Terry James Chaney, 19, of Lilburn was killed later the same night in nearby woods in an exchange of gunfire with police. A police investigation concluded that the home invasion was a random act, with robbery the most likely motive.
Afterward, it took the efforts of friends and family to turn the place from a crime scene back into a home.
And as the house has been restored, Susan Venable's healing has progressed.
"A house becomes something organic," she said. "It's not just a place where you live."
Her reasons for wanting to stay, she said, are simple: "Billy built this house for me."
When he was building the house in 1986, Billy Venable had left coaching and teaching to work in his family's contracting company. He and Susan had been married about four years. Their daughter, Amy, was 2. Their son, Bill, was born while the house was going up.
Billy's son Stephen, from a first marriage, was about 12, and Susan's son from her first marriage, Eddie Steele, was about 8. Eddie spent most summers and some holiday seasons with the Venables.
They chose the lot partly because they considered the Lilburn subdivision established and secure.
Susan, a language teacher at Trickum Middle School in Lilburn, chose the house plans. She wanted plenty of window seats, where she and the children could sit and read. She wanted a porthole window in the family room, with a view of her garden.
Billy Venable did all the plumbing himself and subcontracted much of the other work. Nearly every day they would go to the lot to measure the progress of the construction.
Treehouse still popular
At many stages, Billy would seek his wife's input, asking things like, "Susie, do you want a tray ceiling in here?"
The garden was perhaps her favorite spot. Working there at twilight on a summer evening was "pure heaven," she said. She recalls Billy teasing her about how her garden kept growing. " 'I won't have any lawn left to mow,' " he would say.
When she said she wanted a pond for the garden, her stepson Stephen started the work. Billy finished it the next day.
When her son Eddie wanted a treehouse, Billy consulted with him on the architectural specifications, and then he built it. Neighborhood kids still like to play there.
A few years after they moved in, Billy returned to his first love, coaching high school football and wrestling. Working long days on football fields was not easy for him; he was allergic to grass.
Susan describes herself as a watchful mother. She didn't like her children riding their bikes beyond where she could see them. "All my life, protecting my children has been my No. 1 focus," she said.
On the day of the shootings, Susan canceled plans to visit relatives in Alabama. Billy told her the drive might be too taxing for her to make alone.
The change in plans gave her some extra time with her son. She picked Bill up at school. Later, they went out and bought sandwiches, brought them home and ate together.
Bill went to bed early that night.
Cleanup by volunteers
As soon as the police tape was pulled away from the Venables' front door, people came to clean the house. The volunteers consisted of dozens of men and women — most of them friends from Tucker High School, where Billy Venable was the offensive line coach for the Tigers' football team.
They cleaned and repainted the walls of the foyer and the stairwell. They put in a new front door, replacing the one splintered by a bullet.
Bill Ballard, the head football coach and one of the organizers, said the cleanup was "the least we could do."
Ed Winterstein, a longtime friend of Billy Venable's, said, "Billy would've been at my house doing this, if it had been me." He recalled that he was one of the many friends for whom Billy Venable had installed water heaters.
The cleaning crew labored for three days. Then Susan Venable returned home.
"It was like coming into the house when we first moved in," she said.
Stephen Venable, now an attorney in Los Angeles, said he had mixed emotions about his stepmother's decision to stay in the home, concerned that the emotional strain of the violence might overwhelm all the good memories.
"But she made a decision early on that she wasn't going to let that happen," he said.
The line at the visitation for Billy and Bill Venable stretched out the church sanctuary, through the vestibule and adjoining hallway and deep into a church school building nearby. Susan Venable spent more than six hours receiving condolences.
During that time, she got word that one of Chaney's relatives was outside the chapel. She asked one of her sons to meet with him. The man expressed his sorrow for the family's loss. Susan Venable was grateful.
A daughter's care
Susan Venable returned to work a few weeks after the killings. She mostly got through those times in what she called her "robot state."
Her students, though, seemed to be putting in extra effort for her sake.
"My French class last term was the best I've ever taught," she said.
During spring break, the Venable home received another infusion of compassion and elbow grease.
Susan Venable's daughter, Amy, then a sophomore at the University of Georgia, helped organize a work crew of fellow members of the interdenominational Young Life group on campus.
"They took me on as their mission project," Susan said.
For most of a weekend, more than 40 students and a few adults worked to spruce up the Venables' home. They did landscaping work. They cleared two Dumpsters' worth of junk out of the basement. They repainted most of the interior walls of the house.
A few of the volunteers were Susan's former students. One of them found his eighth-grade French textbook amid the trash.
Learning to cope
Joanna Peeler, a Dunwoody-based psychologist who specializes in cases of trauma and crisis, said it is typical for survivors of such events to be permanently changed.
"They'll never be the same person again," Peeler said. "You don't get over a major tragedy, but you can learn to deal with it."
Susan Venable is dealing with her losses by trying to stay connected with friends and family. She goes out to dinner about once a week with a group of neighborhood friends. And she has an especially close friend whom she talks to almost daily. She is in contact with her children just about every day.
She said she also has experienced a renewal and deepening of her faith. In her search for meaning, she said she finds particular comfort in Psalm 84:5. "Blessed are they who find strength in [God] . . . as they pass through the Valley of Weeping, they make it a place of springs."
Earlier this summer, Venable and a friend went to Guatemala, where they took an intensive course in Spanish. She also went to Los Angeles, where Stephen Venable ran a leg of the Olympic Torch Relay as a tribute to his father and stepbrother.
Now, Susan Venable is preparing for a new school year. And if she's up to it, she said she might even pop up at a Tucker Tigers' game some Friday night.
She also has resumed playing the piano, an instrument she had enjoyed as a teenager.
And when she plays in the foyer, the house that Billy built fills with music.