Below is an article a Plain Mennonite acquaintance sent to me. She sent it to me the day of its publication, but from the moment the tragedy happened in October, I’ve backed away from posting on this topic, especially inside stories shared with me by my Plain friends. The grief was too heavy and the friendships too dear. Now that time has passed, I’ll share a few things here and there in hopes that we will not forget to pray for these families.
Inside the brackets, you’ll see comments made by the friend who sent me the article. I have removed her name and used the letter J.
Grief & forgivenessAmish struggling to adjust to a changed world after tragedy. For them, sorrow is both personal and communal. Forgiving is a central part of their beliefs - but still difficult.By Jack BrubakerLancaster New Era
Published: Dec 21, 2006 11:34 AM EST
LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - JOSEPH ELMER LAPP first saw the light of day and his eight brothers and sisters in the Lapps’ Gordonville home on Sept. 27.
"And, when he was five days old, the awful tragedy happened at Nickel Mines School,’’ Joseph’s mother reported in an Amish newspaper.
"And oh how my thoughts wandered to them, and as I held my little son (extra long) it just seemed my heart would break.’’
Countless other hearts broke on that landmark Monday, Oct. 2. Heightened emotions during the holiday season have amplified the hurt.
When Charles Carl Roberts IV murdered five young girls and maimed five others at West Nickel Mines School, he burst the bubble of rural security and invited grief to settle in Lancaster County’s Old Order Amish community.
But the troubled man who so carefully planned his assault on the school, and his own suicide, also accomplished something he could not have anticipated.
He guaranteed that the core Amish belief in extending forgiveness to everyone — even a man so consumed by hate that he could murder innocent children — would command worldwide attention.
That was the Nickel Mines tragedy’s saving grace — that good can supplant evil in a very public way that cannot be ignored.
The day after.....
When the sun rose on Oct. 3, the crossroads hamlets of Nickel Mines and Georgetown — a mile and a half apart by way of Mine Road in Bart Township — remained in chaos.
Fractured families mourned five dead daughters, prayed for five daughters undergoing emergency surgery and comforted 15 sons who had lost sisters, classmates and friends.
It was just the beginning, everyone understood, of a long, hard grieving process.
"First it’s shock. Then realization. Then it’s heartsick,’’ explained one relative of a murdered child.
The woman paused and looked into the distance. "You just have to see them, and then they just don’t come. They just don’t come.’’
Roberts’ family grappled with its own horror. The man they knew and loved had added his name to history’s list of mass murderers and inflicted immeasurable pain on their community. And now he was gone.
In Nickel Mines, state police monitored the crime scene and the vanguard of hundreds of reporters who would blanket the area for the rest of the week.
In Georgetown, Bart Township Fire Company’s headquarters became command central. Amish and non-Amish firefighters and auxiliary personnel coordinated a round-the-clock response to a community crisis.
Groping its way through an unimaginable nightmare — some residents characterized Roberts’ assault and fallout from it as "the Amish 9/11’’ — the community began preparing to bury the dead.Grieving families greeted visitors at home viewings that lasted long into the night.
Then they listened as ministers provided biblical admonitions during extended funerals.
Because the Amish grieve communally as well as individually, they quickly linked these funeral services to previous community mourning.
Three times in the past seven years, five Amish young people have died at once.
Five died — along with their non-Amish driver — when their van crashed into a tractor-trailer on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1999.
Another five died when their Jeep collided with a snowplow on Route 322 three Decembers ago.
But those were accidents, not killings. The pacifist Amish have little association with violence of any kind. Murder — "die Maerderei" in Pennsylvania German — is as alien as divorce to Amish society.
Before Oct. 2, as far as anyone can recall, only one murder had ever been reported in Lancaster County’s Amish settlement since its beginning in 1737. Naomi Huyard was stabbed to death at her New Holland home in 1982 by a non-Amish neighbor and an accomplice.
Now, suddenly, following a furious fusillade in a one-room schoolhouse at Nickel Mines, there are five more.
After the funerals on Oct. 5 and 6, solemn processions of horse-drawn buggies accompanied the coffins of Naomi Rose Ebersol, Marian Fisher, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, and sisters Mary Liz and Lena Miller to Bart Cemetery, an old Amish burial ground south of Georgetown.
Mourners gathered around as pallbearers lowered the caskets into five foreshortened graves at the rear of the cemetery. Ministers read solemnly from the "Gesang-Buch," the Amish song book. The pallbearers filled the graves and mounded dirt over them.
Then some mourners returned home to grieve for the dead and some to grieve for the living.
The survivors......
"The girls who died, you know they’re well off in heaven,’’ said an Amish man near Georgetown.
He chose his next words carefully: "The others, you have to pity them. A miracle could still happen, but you have to wonder.’’
All of the survivors suffered multiple, severe gunshot wounds.
Two survivors were shot in the head, as were all those who died.
Rosanna King, at 6 the youngest of all the girls, was released from Hershey Medical Center and brought home to die weeks ago. The fact that she survives, albeit in a semicomatose state, has surprised and inspired the community.
Eight-year-old Sarah Ann Stoltzfus remains in therapy at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Because of her brain injury, she lost for a time her ability to speak her second language — English — and mystified doctors and nurses by speaking only in Pennsylvania German. But now she is talking in English again. After concentrated therapy, she is walking again. She has told visitors she will be home for Christmas.
The other three — Esther King, 13; Rachel Ann Stoltzfus, now 9, and Barbie Fisher, now 12 — suffered various facial, internal and limb wounds that caused a variety of disabilities.
All are undergoing therapy. Esther recently underwent reconstructive surgery at a hospital. Now she is back home.
"I just never realized you could be shot that often and come out alive,’’ said the amazed mother of one of the girls.
All have fought to regain full function. Three days after she was shot, Barbie Fisher insisted on attending Anna Mae Stoltzfus’ viewing, arriving by ambulance.
"She was her classmate,’’ a relative explained simply. "They were two seventh-grade girls. Barbie wanted to do it.’’
All of the survivors, including the boys whom Roberts allowed to leave the school, carry psychological scars, said Dr. D. Holmes Morton, a pediatrician and director of the Clinic for Special Children in Strasburg.
But against heavy odds, the five girls live. One has been able to run again. Two have celebrated birthdays. Three have returned to the classroom.
Back to school.......
On the morning of Oct. 9 — a week after the shootings — parents accompanied their boys to the yellow schoolhouse for one last look before they destroyed and buried everything.
The fire company and environmental crews had cleaned away the blood and shattered glass — the ruin left behind by Roberts’ rampage.
Still, the parents expected their traumatized scholars might take only a quick peek inside before asking to leave.
"It was completely opposite from what we thought they might do,’’ explained a parent who, weeks later, continues to recoil from the shock of Oct. 2.
"There was a higher power that helped them,’’ he said.”They went to their desks and took out their pencil boxes and were pleased to see everything again."
So the parents saved the insides of the school. They removed the desks, blackboards and ABC strips running around the walls and reassembled everything in a three-bay garage owned by one of the parents.
Then they tore down the tainted schoolhouse, along with its outhouses, playground equipment and fencing. They carted all of it away, reseeded the land, turned it back into part of Levi King’s pasture.
If you didn’t know where the schoolhouse stood on Oct. 2, you would not be able to locate the spot now.For the past two months, the children have been attending school in the garage. They travel back and forth by van so the three disabled girls don’t have to walk and so everyone is safe.
Nine-year-old Emma Fisher, who slipped out of the old schoolhouse and escaped Roberts’ attack, has joined them.
"It helped the boys when the girls came back,’’ said the parent.”You could see their spirits rise. They’re happier."
Still, the school’s population remains severely unbalanced. Next autumn’s incoming first-graders won’t correct that: Most will be boys.
As a result, the school board is considering extending the school district to include farms with girls.
Emma Mae Zook, the teacher who escaped and alerted police on Oct. 2, quickly re-established school routine. The first item of business: spread out a reduced number of desks to make it seem as if the classroom remains full.
The four R’s — reading, writing, arithmetic and recess — occasionally are broken up by special occasions. On Oct. 17, deceased Mary Liz Miller’s ninth birthday, her grieving family brought ice cream and cake to school.From day to day, the subdued but resilient children work and play with much of their former enthusiasm.
Still, school is not the same.
"People ask when we’ll be back to normal,’’ said the parent. He spoke slowly and deliberately.
"We’ll never be back to normal,’’ he said.”Everything has changed. Fourth grade and below has been devastated."
The school board plans to construct a new building nearby in the near future.
In response to the schoolhouse shootings, church leaders and the Amish Safety Committee briefly considered installing telephones or a direct electronic link with police in all schools. But they rejected those ideas.
"We decided we need to have good locks on the doors, keep our gates closed, have good evacuation plans — and trust in God,’’ a safety committee spokesman said. [note from J - I am not seeing locked gates. They are open and all the scooters are laying on the grass along the fence lines as usual]
An Amish newspaper correspondent offered another safety tip. "It was a sharp reminder," she wrote, "to send our children to school with a prayer."
Gathering together......
Since early October, the murders and the progress of survivors have been chief topics of conversation almost every time Amish gather.
And they have gathered frequently these past few weeks — for fall Communion and the ordination of new ministers, for the annual rite of baptism and for a multitude of weddings.
When the harvest comes in, the Amish go out.
In their improvised sermons at biweekly church services, ministers in the Nickel Mines area have emphasized the importance of practicing forgiveness without reservation.Ministers also have spoken of the schoolhouse tragedy during wedding ceremonies that began in late October and, in the ever-enlarging Lancaster settlement, will extend into February.
"All the preachers are talking about it,’’ commented an Amish man who has attended his share of weddings.The Amish are nothing if not gregarious among their own. Families attend weddings on Tuesdays and Thursdays — sometimes two weddings in one day — and then go visiting in the evenings.
An extraordinary number of visitors — from Lancaster County and far beyond — have made their way to the homes of relatives of the dead and injured girls to console them and to pray with them.
"Some of the families are almost overwhelmed with people coming to visit them,’’ said an Amish man who lives south of Georgetown and keeps in touch with several families.
Amish also regularly visit Roberts’ widow, Marie, and her children at their home in Georgetown.
Families of the children Roberts killed attended the gunman’s funeral on Oct. 7, five days after the killings. Mourners for the murdered and the murderer exchanged condolences.
Roberts was buried in his wife’s family’s plot at the rear of the Georgetown United Methodist Church cemetery, next to the infant daughter whose death evidently caused him deep, enduring pain.
The outside world........
Amish who live too far away to visit bereaved families have sent cards of concern. These outpourings of written material are called "showers.’’ [Note from J - We send card showers for all occasions, birthdays, get well, etc]
Concerned people around the globe have intensified these showers into a downpour that has kept volunteers at the Bart Fire Hall busy sorting letters — at first every day and now several days a week.
Some letters are addressed simply: "The Amish People, Nickel Mines.’’ One, featuring a slight spelling twist, arrived for: "The Bereaved Families, Nickel Pines.’’
Many letters express sorrow for the community’s loss. And many praise the Amish decision to forgive.
Each set of parents and grandparents of the 10 girls has been given huge boxes of cards and letters. They read them over and over. A letter of sympathy from Kinzers is treasured. A letter from Kenya is revered.
Checks accompany many letters. Along with cash collected by various funds set up right after the shootings, nearly $4 million has been donated so far.
A committee established by Amish elders and others plans to distribute this money for extraordinary medical costs, counseling, transportation and other expenses.
That committee and victims’ families repeatedly have thanked the first responders and volunteers who supported the Amish community in a time of great need.
"What the state troopers and the fire companies did — heart, love, sympathy — it’s just unreal,’’ said an Amish man at Georgetown. "They made everybody realize we’re all one people.’’
In late October, the mourning families met with Marie Roberts and the troopers who stormed the school.
"Your compassion has reached beyond our family, beyond our community, and is changing our world,’’ the killer’s widow told the Amish.
A grieving community has shared literature as well as compassion.
Esther Smucker, an Amish woman who lives near Lititz, wrote "Good Night, My Son: A Treasure in Heaven’’ after a driver ran into and killed her 5-year-old son. She described how she coped with the loss over time.
The book, published in 1995, is especially popular now.
"To see one of your children go to his grave is one of the saddest, yet sweetest experiences one could have,’’ Smucker wrote. "It is sad because you miss him so much.... It is sweet because you realize he must be very happy where he now is."
Destination: heaven
The Amish believe they are "strangers and pilgrims’’ in this world. Heaven is their destination. So thinking of five new souls in heaven brings satisfaction, even as physical separation causes pain.
"These girls are in heaven,’’ an Amish woman said decisively while catching up on knitting in the parlor of her home at Nickel Mines. This thought brought her comfort, she said.
"They had nothing to answer for,’’ she explained. "They were innocent. They did not fight back that day. They tried to do everything they were told. These girls are in heaven.’’
The Amish also are certain that "God was in control’’ in the schoolhouse. As evidence, they point to Roberts’ aborted plans to molest the children.
"They prayed and the man’s original plans were changed, so it might have been worse,’’ a man living east of Nickel Mines reported in an Amish newspaper.
But if God was in control, why did he let innocent children die?"
He wanted those five little girls for his angels,’’ explained another Amish correspondent, "and their time here was up.’’ [Note from J - poetic license - the Amish do not believe you die and turn into an angel]
An Amish man at Nickel Mines answered the question with a question: "Did He let it happen because He wanted to distribute His Word across the world more?’’
Automatic forgiveness......
The Amish are keenly aware that their response to this tragedy — immediately forgiving Roberts, meeting with his widow, comforting his children, attending his funeral — has made a huge impact.
"The name of Jesus is being spread all over the world through this,’’ acknowledged an Amish man near Georgetown. He stroked his beard and smiled.
"Isn’t that something?’’ he exclaimed.”It’s ironic. We, as a backward people, are showing the way toward forgiveness.’’
The aspect of the Amish community’s forgiveness that has surprised many people is its seemingly spontaneous nature.
Forgiving is automatic, on all occasions.
Precisely one week before Roberts walked into the schoolhouse, the Amish community buried another Bart Township youth. A hit-and-run driver struck and killed 12-year-old Emanuel King.
The King family forgave the driver long before police could complete their investigation.The basis for Amish forgiveness is found in Jesus’ words on the cross: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.’’
Wrote an Amish correspondent shortly after Roberts struck the schoolhouse: "Oh, Lord, forgive him; he knew not what he was doing.’’
Another Amish man, working in his shop near Georgetown, explained forgiveness a different way: "We can’t receive forgiveness if we don’t give it.’’
But the Amish want everyone to understand that they are not perfect in their forgiving. The very human impulse to despise evil and the evildoer tends to assert and reassert itself.
"We have to forgive again and again and again,’’ said the Amish woman in her parlor at Nickel Mines.”Like the Bible says, not just seven times but seven times 70. We have to forgive every day. It’s not easy. We have to work at it.’’
A man wrote to a Lancaster newspaper criticizing the Amish for being so quick to forgive a murderer but not doing the same for former church members who have left the fold.
That’s a sore point with the Amish, who believe they are misunderstood. They shun errant members out of love, they said: They want them to return.
But Amish do not want to be considered special because of their religious beliefs."We’re no more than anybody else," one said. "Right now, everybody’s looking up to us, and we make mistakes like anybody else.’’
One mistake no one in the Old Order community will make is to believe the Nickel Mines massacre has no message.
The Amish say its message is that "Satan is mighty, but God is Almighty.’’ They say its message is to live righteously and be prepared to die.
And they say its message is found in Matthew 24:14, which proclaims that after the Gospel is preached throughout the world, the "end times" will come.
An Amish man at Nickel Mines said the Amish story of forgiveness, as broadcast by media everywhere, qualifies as spreading the Gospel globally.
Then he said, determinedly, without emotion, "No one can know when the world will end, but to my way of thinking, it can’t be far off.’’
Ten weeks after......
Anyone casually passing through Bart Township for the first time since Oct. 2 wouldn’t notice many changes.
The old schoolhouse is gone from Nickel Mines, of course. There are six new brown patches of earth awaiting permanent grave markers in two cemeteries at Georgetown.
Otherwise, everything looks much the same. On the outside.
But on the inside everything has changed.
The farmer spreading manure, the homemaker at her oven, the woodworker in his shop, the hunter on his tree stand — all find their thoughts obsessively returning to Oct. 2.
On an unseasonably warm late autumn afternoon, two Amish men sat on a house deck south of Georgetown, watching the sun sink and discussing the community’s tragedy.
"I still get awake about 4 o’clock in the morning and it’s the first thing I think about,’’ said one.
"I don’t think everything will ever get back to normal,’’ said the other.
"It will take years and years,’’ said the first.
Seated at a table in his spacious kitchen at Nickel Mines, another Amish man considered the subject.
"There are times you’d just as soon talk about other things,’’ he said with a wry smile.”It’s hard to talk about sometimes, but it seems everyone is.’’
He looked away at a wall. When he looked back, his smile was gone.
"Someday maybe we’ll understand, but at this time our minds are too narrow,’’ he said.”We don’t see the big picture, but He does.”
When the burden of grief grows too great, the Amish turn to surviving children for inspiration.
The Amish value children for their own sake and as church members and farm or business workers in the making. So they spend a great deal of time nurturing and instructing.
More so now.
The Amish often say that "our loss is their gain,’’ meaning the dead girls are better off in heaven. They teach their children to believe the same.
A close relative of one of the girls in the schoolhouse asked her 5-year-old grandson if he thinks about the missing children.
This is what he said.
"Oh, yes...they’re up in heaven. They’re dressed like angels, and they never get hungry and they never get thirsty and they’re never tired. Did you know that?"
And they sing all the time. They sing and sing all the time.’’
Hidden Destiny
