A roller-coaster life
Parkland dad Max Schachter deals with grief by working for change
Max Schachter smiles. How is that possible after all that he has been through?
It is there as he recites playfully contentious text messages between his son Alex and daughter Avery, who worshiped her brother. They are messages he’d seen only hours earlier, for the first time, after authorities returned the phone Alex had in his pocket when he was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
It is there as he describes the confidence Alex revealed in his writing skills after composing a poem for his English class. A poem his father would later read at the 14-year-old’s funeral.
Schachter, on Tuesday named to a new state panel investigating the Stoneman Douglas shooting, carries soul-crushing grief with him everywhere he goes, including at a recent interview at the Marriott Coral Springs Hotel, Golf Club and Convention Center.
While the smile may be self-defense against an agonizing foe, it feels less about him and more about you. It is an offer of reassurance to stranger and friend that he has not given in to darkness, that he is moving forward on projects that honor the legacy of his son.
And if there is one thing Alex Schachter is still famous for in the halls of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, it is an infectious smile.
Love and loss
Schachter, 46, is not new to the sudden loss of a family member. His first wife, Debbie, the mother of his boys, Ryan and Alex, died in her sleep in their Pembroke Pines home when Alex was 4.
“It’s so difficult. Basically after Debbie passed away, being a single dad is tough, and burying your wife is a horrible thing to go through,” he says.
A few years later, he met Caryn, whose husband also had died suddenly. They married and settled in Parkland with her two daughters, Morgan and Avery. Ryan, 17, and Morgan, 16, attended Stoneman Douglas with Alex. Avery, 12, is a student at nearby Westglades Middle School.
Schachter describes an
idyllic transformation for this blended family, where the new siblings “grew to love each other and become wonderful friends.”
“I got Alex’s phone back. I was looking through it and I saw that my daughter Avery had been texting Alex … During the event, and even after the event, you know? She’s like reaching out to him. Communicating with him,” Schachter says. “Avery loved Alex. It’s just so sad.”
There were no outgoing texts from Alex during the shooting.
“No, he had his phone in his pocket. His teacher had yelled at him about taking his phone out in class. He was a good boy,” Schachter says.
Safety first
Each parent who has lost a child in the Stoneman Douglas shooting channels grief in different ways. Ryan Petty, father of freshman Alaina Petty, is working with federal officials on threat prevention guidelines, identifying potential school shooters before they act. Fred Guttenberg has embarked on a well-publicized challenge to the National Rifle Association and laws related to the AR-15, in memory of his daughter Jaime.
Less than three weeks after the MSD shooting, Schachter stood in a conference room at the Coral Springs Marriott surrounded by 25 school safety experts from across the United States for the inaugural meeting of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Commission, a personal project that predates the state panel he was appointed to this week.
“My grief turned to anger, because simple things could have been done to save Alex’s life,” Schachter says.
A March 5 meeting, open only to MSD families, included South Florida law enforcement and police chiefs from Los Angeles, Dallas, Denver, Atlanta and other cities. It also had officials from Southwestern High School in Shelbyville, Ind., dubbed “the safest school in America” after being profiled on “Today” in 2015.
“They all flew in at a moment’s notice, and they were all wonderful and gracious with their time, because they don’t want this to happen again,” Schachter says. “They want to make a difference. They want the violence to stop. And there are things that we could do.”
Schachter credits Ian Moffett, chief of police for the Miami-Dade Schools Police Department, as instrumental in gathering the panel.
Moffett says the Stoneman Douglas shooting hit close to home. He lives in Weston and his son, now a homicide detective in Miami, is a product of Broward County schools. He calls the response of the Parkland parents “courageous.”
“Everybody grieves differently. Max is a ball of energy, and he’s taking this grief and he’s making something positive out of it. That is what you have to do in life,” Moffett says. “Max, Ryan Petty, all these parents, what they’re doing to bring awareness to school safety, they’re the ones who should be given the applause.”
The commission’s goal is to identify state-of-the-art, school-safety guidelines and training methods that will serve as a blueprint for schools nationwide.
Teachers at Southwestern High School wear emergency fobs that connect directly to local law enforcement, as do livefeed cameras that can monitor an intruder. Doors and windows are bulletproof and can be locked remotely.
Schachter was unaware of the program in place at the Indiana school, and was impressed by what he heard. Alex died from a bullet fired through his classroom door.
“We need to change our thought process,” Schachter says. “Back in the day, kids were taught to run out of the school. We can’t do that anymore. We need to make classrooms into a safe, protective box for children. If there’s an alarm, they need to run into the classroom and not go out until you get the all-clear.”
The Southwestern High School system was implemented in 2015 after the Indiana Sheriff ’s Association chose the school for a first-of-its-kind security program it called “a paradigm change in public safety.”
The Indianapolis Star reported the system cost $400,000, most of it funded by the Virginia security company that designed it, NetTalon, with the rest coming from grants.
Schachter recently created a foundation called Safe Schools for Alex, which is raising money at SafeSchoolsForAlex.org for grants to assist schools in updating their safety programs.
Schachter thinks money spent on fobs for teachers is a better investment than arming them with guns.
“That was a big topic at this meeting. I asked every one of the 25 experts that were there if anybody is advocating or recommending putting guns in the hands of teachers, and not a single expert said that was a good idea,” Schachter says.
Not a crusader
Schachter was scheduled to be in Washington, D.C., last Thursday the rounds on Capitol Hill in search of support for the Marjory Stoneman Douglas School Safety Commission and a national standard for school design, intelligence sharing and training methods.
By day an office-bound Coral Springs insurance and financial adviser specializing in life, health and risk management, Schachter is not a natural crusader.
“I’m uncomfortable giving interviews and going on camera. This is not something I’m used to at all,” he tells a reporter. “I don’t really like doing this, but if it will help raise money for Alex’s cause and keep his memory alive, I’ll do it … I want to know that I’ve done everything I can to prevent this and keep the children safe, and I know that I can do it if we just enact standards and put these systems in place.”
Schachter says he and MSD parents such as Guttenberg and Petty are coordinating information on their individual projects. The enemy is complacency and the loss of momentum, especially as the news cycle turns toward other emergencies, he says.
While the Sandy Hook Elementary School, Pulse nightclub and Las Vegas concert massacres failed to inspire meaningful solutions to mass shootings, he thinks this time may be different.
“Look what the children are doing. The kids at Stoneman Douglas, they’re amazing,” he says. “And all these kids, they’re going to be turning 18 and they’re going to be voting. We’re trying to attack this from all angles and not let this happen again.”
Emotional roller coaster
Schachter allows himself a laugh while telling the story of how he first read Alex’s painfully eloquent poem, “Life is Like a Roller Coaster.” He and son Ryan were up into the wee hours the night before Alex’s funeral, struggling to find the right words to say at the ceremony.
A search of his computer turned up the poem, which Alex had written for an English project the week before he was shot. The concluding lines read:
It may be too much for you at times / The twists, / The turns, / The upside downs, / But you get back up / And keep chugging along / Eventually it all comes to a stop / You won’t know when / Or how / But you will know that it will be time to get off / And start anew. / Life is like a roller coaster.
“We read it and we were like, ‘Oh my god, that’s crazy,’ ” Schachter says. “He wrote this just because he loves roller coasters, not because it was any foreshadowing of what was going to happen to his life. It was just crazy.”
He recited the poem at Alex’s eulogy — and the Alex Schachter Scholarship Fund, which is raising money for the Stoneman Douglas marching band that Alex played in, can be found at GoFundMe.com/ Life Is Like A Roller Coaster.
“He was a wonderful little boy,” Schachter says. “He loved to play basketball, play with his friends, play video games. Most of all just to be with his family. He idolized his big brother. And he just wanted to be a little kid. Even though he was 14, he was so tender. He loved to hug and cuddle and he just wanted to have fun and grow up and succeed, and he wanted to please his parents and do the right thing and he was learning so much and just growing into such a wonderful young man.”