‘Be kind ... be present’
NEWTOWN, Conn. — To get to the rebuilt Sandy Hook Elementary, one must navigate a long, winding driveway that leads to a secured gate. “No public access during school hours 9 a.m.-4 p.m.” a sign reads. “Please use intercom.” I pressed the button. “Security,” a voice said. I asked if I could see the principal. “Sorry, we don’t allow anyone in without an appointment.”
A few miles away, the Newtown Board of Education offices were readily accessible to visitors. A sign posted near the front door read: “We are Sandy Hook. We choose love.”
When I told receptionist Jane McEvoy that I was from South Florida, my voice choking with emotion as I said how sorry I was for them and how sorry I am for us, she got up from her desk and gave me a long hug. “We’ve gotten real good at these,” she said. Now, it is Parkland’s turn for hugs and tears. And for processing the unimaginable that should never happen but keeps happening, this time at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
“It’s a club nobody wants to belong to,” said Matt Crebbin, senior minister at Newtown Congregational Church.
A little more than five years ago, on Dec. 14, 2012, a mentally ill former student barged into Sandy Hook Elementary with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and slaughtered 20 first-graders and six school employees, including the principal. Wednesday, a former student with prior mental-health issues barged into Stoneman Douglas High with an AR-15 and slaughtered 14 students and three educators.
Many in Newtown want Parkland and South Florida to know that they are here for us, to offer guidance, support and a road map with a way forward.
“I’d never insert myself unsolicited, but if any of the families want to get in touch with me, I’d give them all the time in the world and help them in any way I can,” Mark Barden, who lost his 7-year-old son, Daniel, at Sandy Hook, said Saturday. His advice for families who lost loved ones this week: “Lean on friends and
family who want to help, and allow yourself time to grieve. And remember there is no right way to grieve. Everyone’s journey is different.”
Newtown interim school superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue said that when she heard about the heroic actions of Stoneman Douglas teacher Scott Beigel and coaches Aaron Feis and Chris Hixon, killed while shielding and saving students, “I lost it. … All the emotions came flooding back. It’s so similar to what we saw here. Teachers feel an obligation to protect their kids.”
Rodrigue, a former principal of Newtown High who became interim superintendent last summer, said she has reached out to Broward Schools Superintendent Robert Runcie by email to offer assistance and share Newtown’s experiences in recovering and rebuilding.
“I know he’s swamped right now and his priority is on focusing on the victims’ families and survivors,” she said. “I just wanted to let him know that when they’re ready, we’re here.”
The events in Parkland ripped scabs from wounds that will never fully heal in Newtown. “The week was horrible for me and my family,” Barden said. “Then you say to yourself, ‘This is not my tragedy.’ And then you realize it is everybody’s tragedy. … There is absolute sorrow, despair, anger and defeat.”
Barden is co-founder and director of Sandy Hook Promise, a nonprofit that educates students and adults about the warning signs of potential violent behavior among at-risk youth. He said the program has trained more than 2.5 million people nationwide and has prevented shootings and suicides. Barden said the frustrating part of the South Florida tragedy was that the shooting suspect’s warning signs were spotted and reported numerous times, but authorities did not properly follow through and intervene.
Shannon Hicks, associate editor of the Newtown Bee, said she sat mesmerized at her computer for hours Wednesday, watching streaming coverage of the Stoneman Douglas shooting from a South Florida television station. Hicks snapped an iconic photo of traumatized children marching out of Sandy Hook in single file on Dec. 14, 2012. Her advice to Parkland: “Be kind, and be present for each other.”
Foundations and nonprofits started by parents of Sandy Hook victims posted statements on Facebook expressing condolences, horror and outrage. “We are again made numb by the magnitude of another entirely preventable, uniquely American tragedy,” David Wheeler, who lost his 6-year-old son, Ben, at Sandy Hook, wrote on Facebook. “[Our family] now has another too-large group of brothers and sisters forced to join our ever-growing family of grief.”
Crebbin said Stoneman Douglas victims’ families and friends, students and teachers who witnessed and survived the shooting, first responders who dealt with the carnage and the community at large are in for “a long haul.”
“It’s not neat and linear but complicated, with so many ups and downs,” said Crebbin, who has helped Sandy Hook victims’ families but whose 303-year-old church did not lose any congregants in the shooting. “If I had to give one word of advice for people in Parkland, it’s that there is no marker like, ‘Oh, if you make it past six months or if you make it past one year, then things get easier.’ The challenge with trauma is you don’t know what the triggers are going to be, and when it will rear up. In our case, we were dealing with very young children, who couldn’t comprehend or express things. All of a sudden, four or five years later, they start talking about it.”
An interfaith clergy group in Newtown will soon contact religious leaders in Parkland and Coral Springs, Crebbin said.
“One thing I know from our experience is that they’re probably getting swamped with a thousand phone calls and emails, so at this point we don’t need to make it a thousand and one,” Crebbin said. “Columbine reached out to us, so we’ll [eventually] reach out to Parkland.”
Columbine High in Colorado was the site of a 1999 mass shooting carried out by two students who killed 13 people. Crebbin said one local group has a tradition of signing banners with inspirational messages and sending it to schools after shootings, something that started after people affected by the 2011 Tucson shooting rampage that wounded thenU.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords sent a banner to Newtown.
As I spoke with Crebbin, I received a text from a friend: “My ex-mother-inlaw’s best friend lost her granddaughter in the shooting. The grandparents were at my wedding.”
“That’s the thing with these events,” Crebbin said. “It’s not six degrees of separation. It’s one or two.”
In Newtown’s case, there also was an international outpouring of goodwill, which presented its own challenges. More than 65,000 teddy bears arrived, along with 500,000 cards and letters. It fell on private citizens to rent 80,000 square feet of warehouse space to store all the things that arrived. The letters and cards were scanned and then burned, Newtown resident Joe Smialowski said, with the ashes part of “sacred soil” that will be incorporated into a memorial still in the planning stages.
And then there was donation money. More than $11 million was collected by the NewtownSandy Hook Community Foundation, and it fell on a committee that Smialowski served on to carve up nearly $8 million. In the end, victims’ families received $281,000 each, and the families of 12 students who witnessed the shooting and survived got $20,000 each. Two teachers who were injured received a combined $150,000. More than $3 million was held and kept by the foundation for future needs, a controversial decision. In arriving at the amounts, the committee held public meetings and met privately with victims’ families.
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” Smialowski, a retired corporate executive and consultant, said Saturday. “There’s a lingering sadness through this town. This past week reminds you there’s always something below the surface that can pop up again.”
The town has tried to build consensus on big decisions. Sandy Hook Elementary was razed in 2013, and citizens decided by referendum to build a new $50 million school on the same site (the new school’s footprint is a few hundred yards from the old one). The new Sandy Hook opened in August 2016, with bulletproof glass and heavy, self-locking classroom doors. But the town still hasn’t built a memorial for the victims near the center of town. Hundreds of designs have been submitted, and the first public hearings have been held in recent weeks.
Crebbin, the minister, was surprised to hear that plans to demolish the Stoneman Douglas freshman building where the shooting occurred had already been articulated. “We tried not to rush anything, because some people needed time,” Crebbin said. “We had families come together and meet each other early on, probably about a month after the event. You have people from different backgrounds, faiths, political beliefs. They realized they all wouldn’t be on the same page, and they agreed to give each other wide berth. The thing we stressed is we need to let each other honor each other’s journeys.”
One big difference between the Newtown and Parkland tragedies: Newtown’s shooter killed himself after the rampage, and the Parkland suspect is alive and may face lengthy legal proceedings, which would force relatives to relive the events. Crebbin said that could be another source of friction among families, with some pushing for the death penalty and others opposed to it.
Newtown is a town of 27,000 with rolling hills 65 miles northeast of New York, similar to Parkland in population (31,000) and socioeconomic level. But Parkland is part of a sprawling county with nearly 2 million people and a school district with 271,500 students and 234 public schools. Newtown is tightly knit, with 4,400 students in seven schools.
It seems there is a code here. Residents refer to “12-14” in the same way New Yorkers refer to “9-11.” But there is no formal ceremony on the shooting anniversary. “People keep things close to the vest,” Smialowski said.
Some residents get agitated at the sight of television cameras. “What are you doing here? The story is there!” one resident snapped when I said I was a reporter from South Florida.
Crebbin said he wanted to offer hope, but that “the reality is after a community suffers trauma, whether it’s a natural disaster like a hurricane or a mass-casualty event,” there are usually higher rates of drug and alcohol abuse and divorce. It is unclear whether anyone is conducting a long-term study chronicling Newtown’s experience.
Smialowski said Yale University and others helped with counseling services in the aftermath. Interim superintendent Rodrigue said the school district has made a concerted effort to monitor and support students who attended Sandy Hook at the time of the shooting, who now range from fifth through 10th grade. Crebbin said his church offers yoga three days a week for stress relief, and that bringing people together for socialization helps with healing.
“For us, the anniversary is hard, because it falls during the holiday season,” Crebbin said.
The Stoneman Douglas shooting occurred on Feb. 14, which means Valentine’s Day will never be the same.
This year, Feb. 14 was also Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent. Crebbin said his church’s theme this season is “broken and blessed.” Instead of Scripture, he is using a Leonard Cohen lyric from the song “Anthem” for his teachings: “There is a crack in everything/That’s how the light gets in.”
“Our hearts are cracked, and they always will be, but the light does get in,” Crebbin said.