Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Thousands of South Floridians depart for March for Our Lives
CORAL SPRINGS — Honks of celebration rang out Friday as students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High began their bus trip to attend the March for Our Lives demonstration in Washington, D.C.
About 250 people, most of them high school students, boarded five buses to journey from Coral Springs to the nation’s capital for today’s event. They’re among the thousands of South Floridians taking part in the student-led demonstration, which is expected to draw more than 500,000.
Demonstrations are planned across the country and other parts of the world, with a goal of boosting school safety and enacting tougher gun-control legislation.
Those who boarded the buses at the Coral Springs Center for the Arts, most of them connected to Stoneman Douglas, were ready to give up the comfort of a night’s sleep in a bed and the first few days of their spring break.
They got rolling at 11:34 a.m. and expected to get to Washington by 7 a.m. this morning. They say they’re going to represent the 17 students and staffers killed in the Feb. 14 massacre at the Parkland school.
“I know if the roles were reversed, she’d do the same and be here to march for me,” said Caitlan Parandjuk, 17, a Parkland high school senior, who was a neighbor of Carmen Schentrup, one of the shooting victims. She died seven days before her 17th birthday.
For 14-year-old Ava DiGilio, an eighth-grader at Westglades Middle School, that means universal background checks and some kind of limits on semi-automatic guns, if not an outright ban. She said she never wants anyone to experience what she did for 90 minutes after the shooting, she said.
“I didn’t know if my brother was alive, or if my brother was dead,” she said, glancing over at Joey DiGilio, 15, a Stoneman Douglas sophomore, also heading on the trip.
“If we don’t do this, no one else will,” she said of pushing for change:
They carried pillows and bags and placards with messages that said, “Stoneman 17 — Never Again — Enough is Enough” and “AR-15’s Kill — Ban One — Save Many Lives.”
Palm Beach Lake High School students were scheduled to leave for the march Friday. The Urban League of Broward County also was sending a contingent of students.
Mercedes Ellis, 17, a junior at Stoneman Douglas from Parkland, showed up with her mother and friend on Friday to board a bus from Coral Springs.
She said she saw it as a chance to be part of history. “It’s important for everyone possible to be there,” she said.
Carol Jones, 63, a retired sixth-grade language arts teacher from Westglades Middle School, was going to support her former students — some of them organizers of the march and some of them killed by gunfire.
“This feels incredibly close to home,” she said, noting that Cruz was captured not far from her house.
She remembers when Alex Wind, one of the student activists organizing the march, ran for president of the sixth-grade class president.
“I am so proud of them,” she said. “So proud they found their voices and are speaking out.”
The MobilizingMSDAlumni group, whose alma mater is Stoneman Douglas, has sponsored the trip for students, parents and chaperones.
Before getting underway, each person leaving from Coral Springs took a Subway restaurant box from a pile. Subway will have another pile at every stop planned along the way. In each box, a letter thanked them for the courage in pushing for change.
After the Feb. 14 shooting, more than 11,500 alumni banded together from across the country and the globe to help the current students.
To date, a GoFundMe fundraiser has collected more than $100,000 to help Stoneman Douglas students travel to D.C. and for other projects that will help them cope with the tragedy.
“It was a sense of disbelief like a lot of people had,” said Craig Pugatch, a Stoneman Douglas 1996 graduate and Fort Lauderdale attorney. “And really a desire to, just like a lot of the students there, to do something.”
Some 576 students and chaperones today will travel aboard three donated charter flights from HollywoodFort Lauderdale International Airport, he said.
Any Stoneman Douglas High School student who was turned away from getting on one of the chartered planes was offered a seat on one of the buses, said David Bilu, a 2000 Stoneman Douglas graduate.
The alumni had been able to book three buses and then a corporate donor came along and donated more.
“It’s all we could have asked for,” he said.
Sergio Eraso, 17, a Hallandale Beach junior from South Broward High School, said he hadn’t thought much about gun control before the Parkland shooting. But he became more passionate about pushing for change after he saw one of his high school counselors cope with the death of her husband, Chris Hixon, Stoneman Douglas’ athletic director and wrestling coach.
While talking about how guns have been available for people like Nikolas Cruz, he said, “It doesn’t make sense to me.”