NEWTOWN, Conn. — The teddy bears at the makeshift memorial outside borough hall are buried up to their noses in slushy snow. Bouquets of roses and carnations wilt in the freezing temperatures.
MARKO GEORGIEV/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Makeshift memorials to the victims of the Dec. 14 school shootings dotting the snow in Newtown, Conn.
This is what this tragic town sees as it prepares for the new year and still reels from the murders of 20 first-graders and six school staff members only 17 days ago.
Perhaps more than Christmas or any other national holiday, the coming of a new year gives birth to promises of new beginnings. It’s as if life turns a page on our collective narrative, and we all raise our glasses and proclaim our intentions to jog more, eat less and read all those novels gathering dust on our bookshelves.
But how do you merrily turn a calendar page here in Newtown and in its tiny neighborhood of Sandy Hook?
On the otherwise quiet morning of Dec. 14, a young man with a history of emotional problems and access to the kind of semiautomatic weaponry that is similar to what U.S. soldiers carry in Afghanistan, shot his mother to death at the home they shared. Then he drove to the Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 20 first graders, the school’s principal and psychologist, two teachers aides and two teachers before taking his own life.
Amid such horrific carnage, can anyone here realistically offer anyone else a Happy New Year?
“I haven’t heard it. I can’t imagine it,” said Katie Sweeney, who runs the Demitasse Coffee Shop in downtown Sandy Hook.
Before the shootings, Sweeney’s shop was a hub for locals to share news about their neighbors. Now it is one of many magnets for mourning.
“We’re talking about first-graders,” said Sweeney, whose nephew is a third-grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “I think everybody is just trying to love each other and do what they can. Once you are hit with something like this, even if you are not affected directly, it makes everyone come together.”
But in this epicenter of tragedy, which has sparked a national debate over the proliferation of military-style assault weapons, any notion of coming together seems to stop far short of cork-popping New Year’s Eve fests.
MARKO GEORGIEV/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERMakeshift memorials to the victims of the Dec. 14 school shootings dotting the snow in Newtown, Conn.
This is what this tragic town sees as it prepares for the new year and still reels from the murders of 20 first-graders and six school staff members only 17 days ago.
Perhaps more than Christmas or any other national holiday, the coming of a new year gives birth to promises of new beginnings. It’s as if life turns a page on our collective narrative, and we all raise our glasses and proclaim our intentions to jog more, eat less and read all those novels gathering dust on our bookshelves.
But how do you merrily turn a calendar page here in Newtown and in its tiny neighborhood of Sandy Hook?
On the otherwise quiet morning of Dec. 14, a young man with a history of emotional problems and access to the kind of semiautomatic weaponry that is similar to what U.S. soldiers carry in Afghanistan, shot his mother to death at the home they shared. Then he drove to the Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 20 first graders, the school’s principal and psychologist, two teachers aides and two teachers before taking his own life.
Amid such horrific carnage, can anyone here realistically offer anyone else a Happy New Year?
“I haven’t heard it. I can’t imagine it,” said Katie Sweeney, who runs the Demitasse Coffee Shop in downtown Sandy Hook.
Before the shootings, Sweeney’s shop was a hub for locals to share news about their neighbors. Now it is one of many magnets for mourning.
“We’re talking about first-graders,” said Sweeney, whose nephew is a third-grader at Sandy Hook Elementary School. “I think everybody is just trying to love each other and do what they can. Once you are hit with something like this, even if you are not affected directly, it makes everyone come together.”
But in this epicenter of tragedy, which has sparked a national debate over the proliferation of military-style assault weapons, any notion of coming together seems to stop far short of cork-popping New Year’s Eve fests.