Katie Couric's Notebook: April is the cruelest month April is the cruelest month. That line from T.S. Eliot's poem "The Waste Land" comes back to me every year when I remember the anniversaries of some of the most difficult stories I've had to cover. April 19, 1995 - Baylee Almon had just turned one. Her lifeless body in the arms of a fireman is the most iconic image of the bombing in Oklahoma City. April 20, 1999 - Craig Scott described to me the anguish of watching as families reunited after the Columbine shootings...seeing the brothers and sisters of his friends find their loved ones. His sister Rachel would not be among them. And then Virginia Tech, April 16, 2007. Sophomore Derek O'Dell, who had been wounded, told me the gunshots sounded like hammers on concrete. "A heap of broken images," as Eliot wrote, all taking place in spring, normally a time of rebirth and renewal, but sadly, with these tragedies, the cruelest month indeed.