What is next for Newtown?
Church leaders receive standing ovations at services Sunday for helping town cope
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) – The grief will not end. Yet the healing must begin. So as the shock of Newtown’s horrific school shooting starts to wear off, as the headlines fade and the therapists leave, residents are seeking a way forward through faith, community and a determination to seize their future.
At religious services Sunday, church leaders received standing ovations from parishioners they have been helping to cope with the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The gunman also killed his mother and himself.
“This has been the worst week of my life,” said Monsignor Robert Weiss of the St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, which lost eight children and two adults in the massacre. He thanked the community for giving him strength to get through the week filled with funerals.
Meanwhile, a former teacher, Carole MacInnes, said she remembers the gunman as a smart, sweet boy in her second-grade class at Sandy Hook.
To deal with the short-term trauma, the state sent dozens of mental health professionals to Newtown. Sessions were available every day, at a half-dozen locations. Relief also has been provided by therapy and service dogs, massage therapists, acupuncturists and art therapists, from around Connecticut and the nation.
After the Sunday service at Newtown’s Trinity Episcopal Church, the Rev. Kathleen Adams-Shepherd received hugs and kisses from a long line of parishioners. She choked up as she read the names of the victims and offered a prayer for all of them, including gunman Adam Lanza and his slain mother, Nancy.
Things will never be the same here. And that transformation itself – heartbreaking and permanent as it may be – is the key to long-term recovery, say some of those helping to lead the healing of this shattered town.
“This will never leave you and should never leave you. Your tears are proof of your love. The trick is, you’ve got to find a new form for your love,” said Dr. John Woodall, a psychiatrist and Newtown resident.
Woodall is founder of The Unity Project, which has assisted recoveries from such tragedies such as 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the war in the former Yugoslavia and child soldier conflicts in Uganda. He said it’s impossible to answer the question of why the Dec. 14 tragedy happened.
“The only helpful question to ask is what next?” Woodall said.
Charles Dumais, principal of Newtown High School, came up with an answer after consulting with Woodall. Dumais is exhorting his community to honor the dead through the kind of high character and good deeds that will create a future of resilience — not sorrow.
“If you have not done so already, please take a moment now to think about what you wish the future to look like,” Dumais wrote in an email to his students and staff. “We had no control over this senseless, cruel, horrific act, but we do have absolute control over our response to it.”
Matthew Crebbin, pastor of the Newtown Congregational Church and leader of the Newtown Interfaith Clergy Association, said the rest of the world will soon go back to normal.
“The bad news and the good news in Newtown is that our community will never be the same,” Crebbin said. “It doesn’t have to mean that this is a world of just loss and sorrow and spiraling disruption if we can draw from this strength and have a sense that we are called to something more and to strengthen connections to each other.”
