Parkland moms make do with memories
Mother’s Day empty without slain children
They will not receive cards or hugs this Mother’s Day from the children they lost at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day. Instead, they will make do with words, flowers and photos from the past.
Lori Alhadeff has preserved the bouquet and vase that her 14-year-old daughter, Alyssa, bought for Lori’s birthday on Feb. 11, three days before the massacre. April Schentrup brightens when she thinks of the “Sonnet to Mom” that her 16-year-old daughter, Carmen, shared with her the night before Carmen read it in class on Valentine’s Day, a few hours before she died. Linda Beigel Schulman has daily chats with the big, blow-up photograph of her son, Scott Beigel, which she brought from the 35-year-old geography teacher’s funeral to her home on Long Island, N.Y.
“I go into his room and talk to it like a crazy person,” Beigel Schulman said. “I say ‘Good morning’ every morning and
‘Good night’ every night. Maybe it sounds like I’m in a little bit of denial — well, a lot of denial. But it makes me feel like I’m in touch with him.”
Some mothers of the 14 slain students and three educators killed at the Parkland school have become visible and active in the three months since the shooting, while others have stayed silent with their grief. All will ache today, just as they ache every day.
“My plan is to treat it as a regular Sunday,” Schentrup said. “We’ll go to church in the morning, then have lunch. But I realize it’s not just another Sunday. I asked Evelyn [her youngest child, also a Stoneman Douglas student] if there’s anything special she wants to do, because I want to make her happy. So I guess that probably means more shopping.”
Schentrup and others in a group that she refers to as “the Parkland 17 Moms/ Wives” took a shopping trip with a purpose on Saturday, to support stores that have changed gun-sale policies since the shooting. They went to Dick’s Sporting Goods and a Walmart in Coral Springs.
The mothers swapped phone numbers and email addresses after meeting at a private get-together for victims’ families a few weeks after the shooting. From that, Schentrup said, an online group chat room and daily text exchanges between victims’ mothers and wives has taken root.
Every few weeks, the group meets at someone’s home where they share food, stories and tears, and talk about coping with private grief in the face of such a public tragedy. On Thursday six mothers and Debbie Hixon, the widow of slain Stoneman Douglas athletic director Chris Hixon, met at Schentrup’s Parkland home to go over the details of Saturday’s “shop-in.”
“Everyone is invited and kept informed, but not everyone participates,” Schentrup said. She said roughly a dozen women have been involved with the group.
“They’ve been wonderful. I’ve been included in everything,” said Beigel Schulman, who makes frequent trips to South Florida to visit relatives and who plans on conducting a shop-in with friends and family on Long Island. “It’s almost like I’m two layers removed, because my son was a teacher and their kids were kids, and because I live so far away. But I consider myself part of the Parkland family.”
The Parkland mothers’ calendars are crowded with events, ceremonies and fundraisers to honor their children’s memories, a way to keep busy and fill the void in their hearts. Lori Alhadeff has launched a nonprofit called Make Schools Safe. On Friday, she held a fundraiser at the Parkland tennis center. Later in the day, Alhadeff flew to New Jersey, where Alyssa grew up (the family moved to Parkland in 2014) and where Alhadeff still has family. On Saturday, they planned to hold the first Alyssa Alhadeff Pear Blossom Festival, a spring celebration and fundraiser in their former town of Woodcliff Lake, N.J.
Earlier this month, on what would have been Alyssa’s 15th birthday, the family had a gravestone unveiling followed by a gathering at the Deerfield Beach pier, where Alyssa loved to swim and hang out with friends.
“Nothing can erase the grief,” Alhadeff wrote by email this week. “But being around family, friends and people that love me does help to ease the grief.”
The Moms/Wives group shopped together Saturday at Dick’s Sporting Goods in Coral Springs before going individually to a Walmart Superstore near Stoneman Douglas High, the same Walmart where the confessed shooter stopped for a snack after the massacre. Dick’s and Walmart raised the minimum age for gun purchases to 21 and also stopped selling certain firearms and ammunition.
Schentrup read a statement outside Dick’s on Saturday, and Hixon and Gena Hoyer, the mother of slain student Luke Hoyer, answered questions. Others who attended included Jennifer Guttenberg, mother of Jaime Guttenberg; Patricia Padauy Oliver, mother of Joaquin Oliver; Annika Dworet, mother of Nicholas Dworet; and Caryn DeSacial Schachter, stepmother of Alex Schachter.
Earlier in the week, Schentrup said even though there is conflicting thought on gun policy and the best course to prevent future school shootings among the victims’ families, the mothers’ group decided that a “shop-in” at stores that acknowledged victims and showed sensitivity would be appropriate.
Schentrup and Beigel Schulman, who both support what they call commonsense gun reforms, did not appreciate comments of new NRA president Oliver North, who this week said that the Parkland parent and student gun-control activists were engaged in “civil terrorism.”
“That’s just irresponsible,” Schentrup said. “For a leader to say that, it’s like they’re inciting people to hate. We’re Americans, and we’re grieving. To call us terrorists is not very nice. It’s fearmongering. But that’s what the NRA leadership always does.”
Beigel Schulman said: “I don’t want to take away all the guns. I’m a person who considers myself reasonable and in the middle. What [North] said is just so unbelievable, and it’s hurtful. At least the people at Walmart and Dick’s showed that they’re human. They probably thought, ‘Oh, my God, what if this happened to my kids?’ They’re hearing the people. But the NRA, they pretend to listen, but they don’t process anything. They have a mantra, and they don’t care about anything else.”
When it comes to politics and policies, the Parkland fathers have been more visible and forceful, on all sides of the spectrum. Fred Guttenberg, who lost his daughter Jaime, and Manuel Oliver, who lost his son Joaquin, have been forcefully advocating gun control and political change. Andrew Pollack, who lost his daughter Meadow, met President Trump and has been advocating better school security and arming teachers. Ryan Petty, who lost his daughter Alaina, has been advocating school safety and better flagging of problematic and potentially violent students.
Patricia Oliver has traveled with her husband as they have created “activist art” in Joaquin’s memory, including in Dallas near the NRA convention this week, where she spoke with a Los Angeles Times reporter. “You have to do what you can to feel better,” she told the Times. “I would do anything to have him here with us.”
But Manuel Oliver said his wife was not available for an interview when reached on Friday. “Maybe when she’s around the other moms [at the shop-in Saturday] she’ll talk,” he said.
April Schentrup and her husband, Phil, have been partners and equals in advocating for common-sense gun control and starting groups honoring Carmen’s memory (including one raising funds for research of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease). April Schentrup says some couples have come to an agreement, with a dynamic that “if one person is really out there, the other feels more comfortable helping behind the scenes.”
As Mother’s Day approaches, Schentrup and Beigel Schulman find solace in memories, and in the words left by their children.
Beigel Schulman has a box filled with every card and letter Scott wrote to her since he first went to sleepaway camp at age 7. He’d send a Mother’s Day card, usually on time, from South Florida to her home every year.
She said Scott was more content in the 10 weeks before his death than at any time in his life. “I’m choosing to celebrate him and the 35 years we had together instead of mourning him,” Beigel Schulman said.
Schentrup said she is glad Carmen, an honors student, broke the rules of her Advanced Placement Literature class by letting her read her “Sonnet to Mom” assignment the night before Valentine’s Day. “They were supposed to give it to us after reading it in class on Valentine’s Day, but she showed it to me before she printed it out,” Schentrup
said. The poem reads:
What do you give someone who has it all? You don’t drink wine I can’t afford taking you out to dine
You rarely enjoy shopping at the mall
And your shoe collection is by no means small
When it comes to makeup, well, you just borrow mine
And Dad already bought the entire Amazon Echo line
The question of what to get you is driving me up the wall
But then I realized it is not the things
The clothes, shoes or food that you love
Although chocolate certainly helps too
It’s doing something small that really sings
How my love for you will last when you’re up above
And my life is better being with you.
“It showed that she totally understood who I was,” April Schentrup said. “She knew that I didn’t need things, because I had my kids and my family. Seeing it early turned out to be her way of giving me a gift.”