Newtown tries to move ahead
Activities help close-knit town recover after school shooting
In the weeks ahead, anguished families will resume their schedules and social lives, but they will be repeatedly reminded of their missing children.
MONROE, Conn. — Little girls hopped out of SUVs and skipped up the steps to the Connecticut Dance studio. They slipped on black leotards, petal pink tights and slippers, and padded off with giggling friends to ballet, jazz and tap classes.
Some of the tiny dancers wore green ribbons, the favorite color of slain firstgrade teacher Victoria Soto, or had scrawled the names of dead students on their wrists. Some arrived from funerals, having lost close friends, karate club and soccer teammates, fellow Daisy and Tiger scouts.
Twenty children have gone missing not just from Sandy Hook Elementary School, but from the intricate network of childhood activities that connect suburban Newtown, Conn. In the weeks ahead, as anguished families resume their schedules and social lives, they will be repeatedly reminded of those missing faces, their sorrow testing the daily routines that bind them.
None of the dancers’ classmates was killed at Sandy Hook, but the owner, Andrea Stratford — Miss Andrea to the children — has a 5-year-old son, Luke, who saw his teacher’s aide after she was shot in the foot. Stratford’s husband, Dennis, who works for the Newtown Board of Education, rushed to the school to make sure Luke had escaped the carnage, and then stayed to help first responders
At first, Stratford wasn’t sure when to reopen her school. She has taught dance for 23 years, long enough to line the walls with annual recital photos. She consulted her 10 instructors.
“They were clearly distraught and couldn’t really put on a front and do dance class,” Stratford said.
She went to see a grief counselor at the middle school in Newtown, who advised that routine gives children a sense of safety.
So she reopened three days after the Dec. 14 rampage. Attendance dipped the first few days, then picked up. She was relieved.
“I don’t want them to be afraid,” Stratford said. “Life needs to be normal because that’s all they have.”
Elyse Scholl, 34, brought her 6-year-old daughter, Marisa, to ballet and tap class Wednesday. The family moved to Newtown just six months ago from Michigan, but they already feel connected to the community in many ways.
Marisa, who goes to Middle Gate Elementary School, is a Daisy Girl Scout with long curly brown hair, and other girls in her troop are fine. But her mother knows that eight Daisy scouts from the Sandy Hook troop are among the 12 girls who were slain, including Charlotte Bacon, the daughter of their troop leader.
Two of the girls played on Marisa’s youth soccer team. The father of one, Caroline Previdi, coached the team.
Scholl has not told Marisa about her dead teammates. Fall soccer season has ended, and Marisa won’t see the team again until spring. Last week, Scholl took her to Newtown Youth Academy, which stayed open after the shooting to provide arts, crafts and sports activities for children.
“She jumped right into a soccer game,” Scholl said, while she found solace with adult friends of her own.
Another youth soccer coach, James Belden, said the town of 27,000 is so tightly knit that almost every family felt the effect.
“There’s only two degrees of separation in Newtown,” said Belden, whose 5-year-old niece was at Sandy Hook during the shooting. “If you don’t know someone, someone you know does.”
That’s why he and some others formed Newtown United last week as a grassroots group to help reduce gun violence. Many mem- bers are parents who know each other from the soccer field and grocery store, he said, and meeting at the local library gave them purpose. So far, they’ve set up a Twitter account and Facebook page, organized a committee “for sensible gun legislation,” and are considering a course of action.
“We have a shared grief,” Belden said. “First, over the weekend, there was a shock and awe and a feeling of isolation. It’s good to come together.”
But few talked of the shootings inside the studio. One young girl mentioned that she was wearing green “for the bad thing that happened in Newtown.” Lindsey Gallagher, an 11year-old sixth-grader, had written the name of Chase Kowalski in black marker on her wrist, next to a heart.