Florida Gunman Clay Duke an 'Honorable Man,' Says Widow Rebecca Duke

The widow of Florida gunman Clay Duke says her husband of more than a decade was a gentle man who was never violent, an "honorable man" who wasn't trying to hurt anyone when he opened fire at a school board meeting.

Duke, an ex-con, fired several shots and ultimately turned the gun on himself to commit suicide at the meeting in Panama City, Fla., on Dec. 14. He complained about his wife getting let go from her job with the district and a tax increase and said he was broke. He held the school board hostage and opened fire, but he didn't hit anyone.

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The widow of Clay Duke, who opened fire at a Florida school board meeting Dec. 14 before taking his own life, said her husband "always wanted to do the right thing."

In the months before the shooting, Duke had trouble keeping a job and couldn't afford his medicine for a bipolar disorder, CBS said. And his wife was laid off from her job with the Panama City Schools.

"I said, 'You know, we just get through, you know, Christmas, it'll all work out somehow,'" Rebecca Duke told CBS' "The Early Show." "He was -- I guess -- just too much, I reckon for everybody, I mean, just like everyone's struggling right now. It's really a hard, hard, hard time."

Still, she said, he was a good man.

"He always wanted to do the right thing," she said. "He was a family man."

She doesn't know what happened that fateful day that set him off.

"Honestly, I don't know what triggered it that day," she said. "And that's going to be a question that I'm going to be asking myself for the rest of my life."

She said her husband served two tours in the Air Force and was probably just trying to scare the board members with gunshots. "He was a good shot," she said.

Her family members are "overwhelmed and devastated" by his death, she said.

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"And they're trying to cope the best way that they can," Duke said. "The reason I agreed to do this is to -- to give my husband and his family some dignity and respect, because this was an honorable man. And he deserves it, cause he was a man and a father, a grandfather, a son and a husband before he was a gunman."

She said she'll always miss the Clay Duke who was her soulmate.

"I am really numb. I feel like I died that day," Rebecca Duke said. "To love someone and to get that kind of connection in life is very rare and it is a gift from God. And that's why I'll cherish this. And that's why this is so hard for me, because I feel my soul's been ripped out, and I don't know how to get it back or even deal with it."