Santa Fe honors Parkland victims

SANTA FE — Across the country Thursday, tributes poured in for Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., acknowledging the mass shooting a year ago that claimed the lives of 17 students and teachers.

In this rural community, a town still grieving from an eerily similar shooting at its local high school months after the Parkland violence paid its respects to the Stoneman Douglas victims Thursday night, hosting a small candlelight vigil at a local Methodist church.

The vigil was sparse, with only a few dozen people in attendance and rows of empty chairs. Few local Santa Fe officials showed up

to the event, and no representatives of the local high school, save for one school board member. A table in the front was lined with 17 roses and candles, one for each victim of the Stoneman Douglas shooting.

The audience mostly consisted of students and community members, including Flo Rice, a substitute teacher wounded during the May 18 shooting at Santa Fe High School. Rice and her husband, Scot, sat in the front row next to Steve Perkins, whose wife, Ann, was also killed in the shooting.

Perkins has expressed displeasure with how the school district has responded to the shooting. On Thursday, he said the low attendance at the evening vigil “is a prime example of why we are concerned with what the school and school board is doing. They don’t show a presence.”

The ceremony began with a prayer led by Wendy Norris, the public information officer for the Santa Fe Resiliency Center. The center is an extension of the Aldersgate United Methodist Church. It was created immediately after the high school shooting and serves as a free long-term resource for Santa Fe residents, providing therapy, spiritual care, advocacy and peer support.

Mayor Jason Tabor, followed with a short speech, noting the shared tragic bond that the community shares with Parkland, Fla.

“We are part of that same club that nobody wants to be a part of,” Tabor said. “We are stronger together, united under the worst circumstances, but a bond stronger than any other.”

Donna Hayes, a Santa Fe resident whose son attends Santa Fe High School, read a poem, “Life is Like a Roller Coaster,” written by Alex Schachter, one of the Stoneman Douglas students killed a year ago. The poem was given to Hayes by Andrew Pollack, the father of another Stoneman Douglas victim, Meadow Pollack.

The 17 victims’ names were read followed by the ringing of a bell. A slideshow followed with pictures of each flashed across a projector screen.

After the ceremony, several people, including Hayes, stood in front of a video recorder, giving individual tributes to the Parkland victims

“We only have memories of the past. It’s hard to move forward,” Hayes said.