At Marjory Stoneman Douglas High one year later, an uneasy hero is still guiding students
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — After the carnage that took 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School one year ago, few in the halls and classrooms of the Parkland school walked away with the toxic mix of emotions that weigh on Ernie Rospierski.
The 37-year-old social studies teacher lost six students he considered his own that day as gunfire ricocheted around him through the hallway chaos on the third floor of Building 12. It might have been more had Rospierski, with an 18-monthold son at home, not put himself between the shooter and the students, sending them fleeing toward a stairwell exit.
Grazed by two bullets, the burly former rugby player then pressed himself against the stairwell door, denying the gunman’s attempts to open it as Rospierski watched the last students help a seriously injured friend down the final steps to safety. No more children were shot that day.
“Ernie Rospierski is an unsung hero,” said the chairman of the state commission investigating the MSD shooting.
Rospierski does not allow himself that title, his memory of what transpired outside Room 1249 a storm of conflicting emotions. He reluctantly accepts the satisfaction of having helped most of the students with him reach safety, something he says any Douglas teacher would have done.
But this is balanced by regret at having forgotten his keys when the door locked behind him during what he thought was a fire drill, trapping Rospierski and his students outside the shelter of their classroom. Some were shot and killed while huddled in the alcove by the door, others while trying to run. When he held the stairwell door, as the gunman peered through the glass and jiggled the handle, one of his students lay mortally wounded at Rospierski’s feet.
And yet, somehow, he has reached a standoff with the darkest elements of the nightmare. Despite having to walk past a fenced-off Building 12 each day, through passages once sealed by police tape, seeing the faces of students and faculty who also witnessed bloodshed, Rospierski has been able to rekindle the optimism that has made him such a popular teacher at the school.
“Is it something that I’ve played over in my head? Yeah, a couple of times. But I’ve also been very careful to avoid the what-ifs. Dealing with what happened is enough as it is,” Rospierski says. “That stuff, from that day, is never gonna leave me. And I’m OK with that. I’ve made my peace with that stuff.”
Garrulous and charismatic, the Michigan-raised Rospierski is well schooled, but speaks with the unadorned vernacular of a man adept at making complex ideas understandable. He’s a teacher, an educator. Even as the definition of what a teacher is evolves, he’ll tell you there is no higher calling.
“I did what I think any person who I consider a friend would do,” says Rospierski, remembering the teachers who acted forcefully, fearlessly, selflessly as bullets flew around them, to protect not just their own students, but any student in Building 12.
Geography teacher Scott Beigel, died in the doorway of his third-floor classroom while helping kids get inside. English teacher Stacey Lippel was wounded while pulling student Madalyn Snyder from the line of fire at the last second.
Another friend, athletic director Chris Hixon, ran toward the gunfire, confronting the gunman in the first-floor hallway, where he was fatally shot. About 30 seconds later popular coach Aaron Feis stood in front of the gunman and was shot and killed.
It is in honor of those individuals and their extraordinary actions that Rospierski lives his life. More so than ever, he is a teacher who is also a role model, confidante and cheerleader.
“I know I was very lucky. I know that not everyone around me was. And that’s terrible. But, I’m here, so I’ve got to make the most of it. Otherwise them not being here is even a greater loss,” Rospierski says.
From the moment the first shots were fired down the hall on the third floor of Building 12 until the gunman stepped away from the stairwell door that Rospierski was blocking, 63 seconds elapsed, according to the final report of the state’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission.
Surveillance footage and pictures show Rospierski’s movements with the students, from the alcove outside Room 1249 and, in the seconds the shooter stopped to reload, their flight into the stairwell. Rospierski, who now keeps his keys on a retractable cord at his hip, says that by the time he discovered he didn’t have his keys, he was being shot at.
He has made a point to avoid seeing the video.
“Given the situation I was in, I think I did as best as I could have, in a god-awful situation,” he says. “I don’t ever want to see the tape, but from what the guys who did the investigation for the commission said, by the time he was in the hallway and shooting down, I was by my door. So I don’t know if I would have been able to open it up and get the kids inside safely anyway.”