The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • Page 15

Sentinel Star, Tuesday, December 23, 1980 3-B From 1-B Rushings tified. Before Debra died, she grabbed her gun and shot J.R. in the hip. When police arrived a few minutes later, the kids were still in bed. Debra's body, slumped on the couch, bore seven bullet wounds.

ed to stay. The shelter director told J.R. that Debby wouldn't be coming back out. As soon as he was gone, shelter staff members took her to the hospital, where she was admitted and remained to recuperate for three weeks. She pressed kidnaping charges and filed for custody of the children, still with their father in Tulsa.

Once again, Debra worked at rebuilding her life. That fall, her strong spirit flowered. New friends flocked to her aid. One gave her a gun for self-protection. After much searching, Debra got a desk job at St.

Mary's Hospital. She and a friend rented a home in a quiet, older neighborhood. Debra's smile returned. She began dating a man introduced to her by friends. She later called those months the happiest of her life but she never dropped her guard.

She slept half awake on her couch, a gun hidden under a cushion. During an emotional divorce and custody trial, Debby won back her children. But J.R., who showed affection for the kids as they did for him got visitation rights every other weekend. On Dec. 9, returning the children to the Enid Police Station (the court had assigned this as custody pick-up point), J.R.

had a confrontation with Debby's parents in the parking lot. He knocked her father to the ground and, according to testimony, punched her mother. Mrs. Settle suffered a concussion; her husband spent three weeks in the hospital for treatment of internal bleeding and a broken hip. J.R.

was arrested and released on $2,500 bond. That Christmas, Debra and her family gathered around her father's hospital bed. It was not a sad time. They celebrated the fact that they were together and alive. But the story of Debra Rushing's life was to have one more violent chapter.

In the early morning hours of Jan. 11, 1980, J.R. and two companions Quanita Washington, 23, and Jerri Pollard, 26, drove up to Debra's yellow bungalow. According to testimony, Jerri was sent to the door to see if Debra would talk with J.R. He burst in the door behind Jerri.

Debra screamed and 3.R. shot her, Pollard later tes kids, packed their clothes and sped to Enid in her yellow Ford. She was welcomed by Option House, the crisis shelter operated by the Enid YWCA. Briefly her life was transformed. She found support and understanding with the staff and other battered women.

And she felt safe the location of the house was a closely guarded secret; identities of the residents were kept confidential. Debra relaxed and began to talk about making a new life in Enid. She called her folks and told them she was safe. She pawned her wedding rings to scrape together money. But the two weeks of calm and hope ended at the point of a gun on Aug.

8, the same day J.R. was served with divorce papers. That evening, Debra and the kids were just returning from a swimming meet Windy had won a ribbon, and everyone was in high spirits. As Debra parked next to the shelter, J.R. jumped in her car from the driver's side, and his companion, Quanita Washington, squeezed in from the other.

The kids were ordered out and hustled into a waiting van. Debby screamed and struggled, but no one beard her. She later testified that Quanita slapped her while J.R. pried her hands off the steering wheel. Quanita fished Debra's revolver out of the glove compartment and held it to her head while J.R.

pulled out of the driveway, according to later testimony. The three, following the van driven by a friend, headed back to Tulsa. During the three-hour drive, Debby would testify, J.R. threatened her life while Quanita pistol-whipped her and pummeled her face. Dazed and bleeding, she begged to be beaten no more.

She spent two days in Tulsa with J.R., staying with his folks, who offered no sympathy. Later, mother Effie Rushing would say under oath that J.R. had driven to Enid at Debby's request. Feeling that she couldn't leave Tulsa alone, Debra worked at regaining her strength. J.R.

took her to a discount store to buy sunglasses and makeup to conceal her cuts and bruises. She later testified that J.R. told her he loved her, that he only wanted her back. He asked her to drop the divorce petition, and took her to her lawyer's office for that purpose. Saturday, three days after the kidnapping, Debra and J.R.

and two of the kids returned to the Option House so they could get the clothes left behind. Once she was safely inside Option House, she decid J.R. was arrested less than an hour after the shooting, in tiny Pond Creek, north of Enid. Three days later, family and friends gathered for Debra's funeral, rage coursing beneath their They had suspected; and Debra had known, they say, that J.R. would kill her someday.

They, and she, had done everything they could within the law to prevent that. Enid police kept a close watch on her house. She pressed her claims in court. "The only way she'd be alive today is if she'd been three or four thousand miles away," said Shirley Hu kle, director of the Enid YWCA. But running would've violated the divorce decree, and Debra, Hukle said, "was a woman who worked within the system." In February 1980, a Garfield County, jury found J.R.

Rushing and Quanita Washington guilty of kidnapping. To avoid influencing the jury, the murder was never mentioned in that trial. Debra's testimony from the preliminary hearing was read aloud. She was always referred to in the present tense. Both J.R.

and Quanita drew four-year sentences. Quanita is now out on bond pending appeal. On Sept. 29, J.R. Rushing, 35, was found guilty of first-degree murder in Debra's shooting.

The jury rejected the death penalty. He got a life sentence, and under Oklahoma law he will be eligible for parole in 15 years. Today, the Rushing children are in the custody of the state of Oklahoma, and are living in foster homes. Debby's sister, Anita, is pursuing an administration of justice degree at Wichita State University hoping to work with juveniles and prevent future J.R. Rushings.

The Settles have retired and moved out of state. They are still afraid of J.R. and his buddies, but they no longer worry for Debby. Says Mrs. Settle softly: "She's safe now.

No one can hurt her anymore." was a woman of 21 with her own ideas. But when she spoke her mind, he retaliated with fists and words, telling her she was ugly and stupid. Intermingled with the beatings were periods when J.R. was gentle and attentive. But the attentive-ness cloaked suspicion and jealousy he accused her of having affairs and called her constantly while he was at work to check on her.

During this time, the couple lived in a small home in Tulsa. J.R. worked as an electrician. Debby, who'd gotten the equivalent of a high school diploma, held intermittent sales jobs, but mainly stayed home with the children. In snapshots taken then, the children look loving and happy.

But they were confused and frightened. They learned to shut out the violence, deny the horror of their home. The eldest, Windy, at age 11 would testify in court that she had never seen her father strike her mother but she had seen her mother beat herself. A few years ago, Debby realized the violence would not end until one of them was dead. Later, she told a reporter that twice, when her husband had passed out from drinking, she had held a gun to his head.

"I could cock it," she said, "but he was the father of my dren, so I never did fire it." In February 1979, when she fled vowing suicide, Debby told her sister of a tyranny of violence that held her hostage. She returned to J.R. that day but only because she feared greater violence if she did not. In July, Debby came to Wichita for a hysterectomy so she could recuperate in her parents' home. During the week in the hospital and two weeks with her family, the long-contained fear and anger spilled out.

The Settles summoned a minister, and, together, the family prayed. Debby beseeched God to help her. And in the back of her mind was a new discovery: A doctor, seeing her bruises and scars, had quietly left a magazine in her hospital room, flipped open to a page with a toll-free crisis number. She called it and found out about a shelter for battered women that had opened in Enid, 150 miles west of Tulsa. Debra returned to Tulsa, but remained with J.R.

only two nights. Early on July 26, she gathered the SCIIWINN BICYCLES lltAMT WANT A PIANO? 1 ORGAN? Big Selection! Open till 9 p.m. Befar. You Buy IHY SIHttfH lowest Prices in Central Florida Movie review IVIUOIb I UnCO ORIAN0O COCOA DAYTONA Hwy. le Spi Orlando Allamonle Springs 834 2000 843-2400 Tomlin a genius at work in 'Nine to Five' PASSPORT PHOTOS WHILE YOU WAIT iiJnidd PHOTO and HOBBY 634 N.

Mills Orlando Phone 811-1485 mtes Christmas QUITE SIMPLY, MINK WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE. i ft Dinners served from Ilarn-9pm at regular prices passed over for promotions (even though she has trained the men who have leapfrogged past her); that Parton needs her secretary-to-the-boss job even though she has to put up with constant sexual harassment. A fine setup for what, you think, will be a story that tackles a serious issue with comedy. What happens, though, is that "Nine to Five" ditches the serio-comedy in favor of farce, slapstick and cheap laughs (although none, thankfully, with Parton's figure as the target). There's some very, very funny stuff here a fantasy segment wherein Tomlin plays a Snow White type out to poison the boss, a hospital segment wherein Tomlin pushes around a stiff on a slab but considering the seriousness of' the secretary issue, the script has to be considered a failure.

Not so the acting. Tomlin is brilliant (Can anyone use various types of smiles so Parton has a natural comic flair, the same type she displays on talk shows and in interviews. Dabney Coleman, as the big bad boss, is to offices what J.R. Ewing is to oilfields. Fonda is not altogether believable as a naive-wimpy sort, but her role is also the least interesting.

In the end and the ending, as in many recent movies; is weak there's no sense at all that very much in "Nine to Five" could really happen. What happens is that we get something quite different from what we expected which means that, despite the fun of most of it, we've been had. DEAN JOHNSON FILM: Nine to RATING: PG (a sprinkling of obscenities) PLAYING: Park West, Interstate Mall Six, Sanford Plaza There's a genius at work in this movie. It isn't, as you might suspect, Jane Fonda. It isn't Dolly Parton.

It certainly isn't Colin Higgins, the director and co-writer of the script. You may know whom we have left out. She's the one, the genius. But then any comedy fan with a grain of humor has known for years that Lily Tomlin is a genius, the biggest comedy talent of the 1970s. Only Richard Pryor can touch her when it comes to originality.

I suspect that Tomlin contributed more than her acting and timing to "Nine to Five," that at least a few of the lines must be her own. What she doesn't steal, Dolly Parton does. "Nine to Five" is about secretaries, not your everyday movie subject. The intent what with feminists Tomlin and Fonda involved might have been more serious than what turns up on screen. There are clues to such at the start; in fact, "Nine to Five's" start is nothing short of marvelous (including the opening credits sequences showing secretaries rolling out of bed and into work to the tune of a song that Dolly Par-ton wrote and sings).

We learn, in short order, that Fonda, a new employee, is a divorcee who has never held a job before; that Tomlin, a widow with four children, has been at Consolidated Cos. for 12 years and has been consistently Cift Certificates available New Year's No increase in menu prices I uptn until lam Hcscrcations accepted tf" the holidays and Sew Year's Kv Altamonte Springs 285 Douglas Ave. 869-7100 LBelle uig All Major 351 North Orange Avenue Credit Cards Downtown Orlando 422-3565 Gift Idea for Christmas. If it's a gift certificate from it means so much more. JV 1 If class Meed for 60LD I LP preset Y- 1 MOUNTINGS Jr NT S0n'iSss'fs tie Yt tlf SILVER i TACKS The Gold Silver Connection can solve your Christmas budgeting problems.

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