SANDY HOOK 6 YEARS LATER
Community to continue long road to recovery as shooting anniversary approaches
“We have to try to stay true to what we have done in prior years. The important thing is that everyone is together.” Lorrie Rodrigue, superintendent of Newtown schools
NEWTOWN — The sixth anniversary of the Sandy Hook massacre on Friday not only marks a day of grieving and healing for Newtown, but the significant steps the town has taken on the road to recovery since the last anniversary.
The town has chosen a designer to build a memorial to the 26 first-graders and educators slain at Sandy Hook Elementary School, for example, and construction is underway on a community center made possible by a $15 million gift from General Electric after the 2012 tragedy.
Sandy Hook teenagers have emerged as advocates and activists, alongside students who survived the mass shooting at a Florida high school on Valentine’s Day. And families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook massacre are playing hardball with conspiracy theorists, challenging the lies of extremists and deniers in multiple defamation lawsuits.
“Every year is still really difficult and challenging for so many of our families,” says Lorrie Rodrigue, the superintendent of Newtown schools. “But people have really pulled together and helped us move forward.”
The plan is to mark Friday’s solemn anniversary with services to begin and end the day, and to observe moments of silence and reflection at work and school.
The public is invited to attend evening services at two houses of worship — an annual interfaith service at 7 p.m. at Congregation Adath Israel, and an annual memorial Mass at 7:30 p.m. at St. Rose of Lima Church, both in Newtown.
“We will request a voluntary moment of silence for people to reflect privately at their desk or work stations,” said Dan Rosenthal, the town’s top elected leader. “And I plan on attending the evening services.”
The anniversary is expected to be less of a spectacle than the fifth anniversary last year, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy and leaders from Connecticut’s Congressional delegation led a list of VIPs at the memorial Mass. But this year’s anniversary will be notable because it is the first anniversary to fall on a Friday — the same day as the tragedy six years ago.
“We have to try to stay true to what we have done in prior years and be supportive to families, students and staff,” said Rodrigue. “The important thing is that everyone is together.”
The school system will start the day with a 7 a.m. service for staff provided by the Newtown Interfaith Council, followed by an informal reception with refreshments.
It will be up to administrators to craft age-appropriate messages for students, with the understanding that most elementary students may know little of the worst crime in Connecticut history.
“Educators should not be the first-time providers of information regarding Sandy Hook School,” reads a guidance memo Rodrigue wrote to staff on Tuesday. “Instead, this needs to be a conversation that involves parents or guardians in the manner they want to address this as a family.”
A letter from Rodrigue and Rosenthal also went out to families who lost loved ones in the tragedy, informing them about town resources, the evening services, and an advisory asking the media to stay off Newtown property during the anniversary, in deference to those in grief.
“The letter lets them know we think about them every day,” Rosenthal said.
Of the recovery steps Newtown has taken in 2018, Rosenthal is encouraged most by progress on the Sandy Hook Memorial — a long-term project that is expected to be built and open to the public by the seventh anniversary of the tragedy in 2019.
Most of the work in 2018 focused on choosing the right design from an international field of 188 submissions — a serene design with a “sacred Sycamore” tree growing from a reflection pool.
“We’ve just begun the task of digging deeper into the design and the budgeting, but always with a focus on keeping the folks who lost so much in everyone’s thoughts,” Rosenthal said. “This is the way the Newtown community will seek to memorialize these loved ones.”