A Sandy Hook promise to keep
The media is as strong as ever. Just ask Owen Brown.
This 19-year-old state college student made a visit to the NESN studios a few years ago and came away determined to one day cover baseball — hopefully the Red Sox. It was partly due to the impression Jim Rice and his broadcast colleagues made.
“Jim Rice and crew showed me there’s an avenue outside of playing baseball,” Owen said. “I also developed a love of writing.”
Owen credited his mother and grandmother for instilling a resiliency in him that keeps him working toward this dream. But it didn’t come easy.
He said his mother pulled him out of Sandy Hook Elementary School on Dec. 14, 2012, to visit New York City for a model train show at a botanical garden. He was in fourth grade and playing hooky for a day was just what good moms sometimes do.
When the news broke that 28 fellow students and adults were murdered that day, Owen’s life changed forever. He can still recall the school’s beloved principal, Dawn Hochspring, “in a gold dress” the night before at an event. That’s how he remembers her. That principal ran toward the gunfire with only one thought — the safety of her students.
Owen said his mom began “sobbing” as she broke the news to him that his classmates were gone. He was bullied in middle school. Why? Because he survived? He transferred out of Newtown, Conn., to a high school nearby.
Now, this resolute teenager is embarking on a career as a sports journalist.
I met Owen at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts (MCLA), my alma mater, to share my trajectory from North Adams and explain why journalism can never die. But I came away with Owen lifting my spirits.
This affable teen is filled with promise. With so much uncertainty in this world as we climb out of the pandemic, it’s people like him who help others keep on the path.
“I’m not going to be a victim,” he told me. “I’m going to make a difference.”
The Herald is embarking on a “Readers’ Corner” initiative to ask subscribers what you want from your paper. We’ll go to the Berkshires and back to Boston to find the answers.
Last week I was a guest at MCLA as part of a visiting journalist program called the Hardman Lecture Series. My one goal was to share that newspapers — no matter how readers opt to have stories delivered — can never die.
There are no easy answers, so we’re just going to keep chasing the news here at the Herald and ask you occasionally how we’re doing.
Owen said his eye is on the sports pages and baseball. We’re a Red Sox town and that’s a good place to start your reading. To quote from W.P. Kinsella’s “Shoeless Joe” novel: “Baseball is the most perfect of games, solid, true, pure and precious as diamonds. If only life were so simple.”