San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
Town buries another child
Fourth-grader remembered as ‘fierce, with a beautiful, contagious smile’
UVALDE — Police led a procession along Main Street, with the closed northwest side of the road providing an unbroken path to the cemetery for the line of vehicles following the silver Cadillac hearse carrying the casket of 10-yearold Alexandria Aniyah Rubio.
On Saturday morning, this small city in South Texas buried yet another child.
Mourners gathered in Uvalde to remember Lexi, as her family called her, who was among the 19 children and two teachers killed by a gunman at Robb Elementary School on May 24.
The tight-knit, largely Hispanic community has now said their goodbyes at 18 fresh graves at Hillcrest Memorial Cemetery, an aftereffect of one of the deadliest mass
shootings in U.S. history.
In unrelenting heat, hundreds of people attended Lexi’s service at 10 a.m. at First Baptist Church, the brickfaced building a mere mile north of the school.
For those closest to her,
Lexi is remembered as a fourth-grade student who dreamed of earning a softball scholarship at St. Mary’s University in San Antonio to major in math before attending law school. She was a “budding feminist,” her mother said, and admired U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
In her obituary, family of Lexi said “her closest clique comprised her siblings. Fishing and sports with dad, cuddling up on the couch reading or watching TV with mom, or reciting jokes to each other in the living room to see who would be the first to laugh were favorite activities.”
Lexi “was driven, athletic, intelligent and fun,” her obituary reads. Her siblings, ranging in age from 8 to 18, described her as “fierce, with a beautiful, contagious smile that more often than not turned into a hearty laugh. She was sarcastic, but caring, giving.”
The sunny morning brought dozens of law enforcement officers from all over the state, but mostly the friends and colleagues of Lex