Based on the article’s subhead (“a community newspaper covers a national tragedy”), I entered the text with an admittedly clinical agenda: to sate my professional curiosity about the logistical local-journalism challenges that took place that day. I had already read (or thought I had) most of the documented facts and heartbreaking narratives that powered the 24/7 news Niagara in the days following the shootings. I didn’t anticipate any revelations from the chronology that would shock me. Every thesaurus-generated synonym for “horrific” and any supporting anecdotal evidence had already broken through the bulwarks, so I steeled myself for a similar offensive. I felt I could handle this new take with detachment — the detachment that fools think comes with a few flips of the desk calendar.
The article sucked all of the air out of me. In excruciatingly observational detail, Aviv lays out December 14’s timeline, from the moment that reporter Shannon Hicks drove into the Sandy Hook parking lot to cover what she thought might have been a domestic dispute, to when local clergy converged upon the town's firehouse to handle the small group of parents left there after all surviving children had been claimed and brought home.
Aviv also shares the 136-year history of the Bee, briefly examines the “geographic lexicon of tragedy” (how psychological trauma can affect an entire ZIP code), and chronicles how out-of-town journalists and conspiracy theorists launched their post-“incident” assault on Newtown’s residents. It doesn’t appear all that gut-wrenching in my own words, but that’s because I’ve left out the details — I can’t describe them the way the Newtown interviewees do.
What struck me most, after I took Aviv’s fist out of my stomach, was how this small town simply dealt with the aftermath. Its collective bravery is indisputable, as are the individual acts of heroism that took place during and after the murders. It's hard not to get emotional while reading these first-person confessionals.
But Newtown's cool-headed, common-sense approach to coping with catastrophe is also noteworthy. The town refused to fall victim to the sensationalism that overtook interloping journos. The Bee didn’t print “war stories,” instead concentrating on more redemptive, inspirational tales to “keep out of the sticky amber that freezes things in time.” Bee editor Curtiss Clark put big-city reporters in their place, showing seasoned journalistic restraint that steered clear of knee-jerk editorials about gun control (despite his own personal feelings that leaned in that direction) and advised residents to “be cautious with their newfound authority” and not let their grief “be co-opted by politicians.” Reporters were baffled why strangers were sending thousands of stuffed animals and cash to help their affluent community. While they were appreciative, it seemed impractical, a waste of resources.
This pragmatism went hand-in-hand with Newtown's fierce protectiveness and neighborly loyalty. Bee staff members say they’ll never publish photographs or reveal certain conversations that occurred that day. “I saw and felt things that led me to believe I have an obligation not to,” said John Voket, the paper’s government reporter. At a public hearing in January, the mother of one of the murdered first-graders “expressed remorse that she and her neighbors had never reached out to the Lanzas, who lived on the same street.”
If you’re from a small town, you know this is what small towns do. When shit hits the fan, you don’t abandon the fan and rush out to buy a new one. You meticulously and methodically clean the fan until it’s as good as new, or you borrow your neighbor’s fan and make sure you take excellent care of it. Or, even better, you head over to your neighbor’s place and sit with him in front of his fan until three or four beers later, by which point you’ve forgotten about the heat completely.
I don’t know how good that metaphor actually is, but it seems to express something I'm feeling in an abstract way. If you’re from a small town, you understand its inescapable, frustratingly magnetic pull. You understand the protectiveness, the loyalty, the get-‘er-done mentality. You empathize with the Lou Reed/John Cale song, but you don’t completely buy into it. You watch Parks and Recreation and you get it. You recognize John Voket’s reluctance at talking to the New Yorker for this article: “You don’t have to worry — you’re going to write this story and leave. We’re going to be covering this story forever.”
I was offered a job a few years back to direct the communications efforts for my hometown’s school district. This was a surprising development, because I was convinced I had blown the panel interview. However, I suspect my Leslie Knope-esque pleas during the Monty Python-esque grilling (and entrenched in my thank-you letter) gave me some kind of leg up. My homegrown arrogance and I both knew that I was the right person for the job. Only a local could tell the story the way it needed to be told.
For that reason, I turned the job down. I wasn’t put off by the endless evening board meetings and weekend football games and community events that would take me way beyond the typical 9-to-5. I knew I was entering Leslie Knope territory, before I even knew who Leslie Knope was. I knew that the 18-hour days I would willingly put in would also take me far away from the infant and toddler I had waiting for me an hour’s-commute away. I knew that I would never be able to stop covering the story, just as the people of Newtown will never stop covering their story — a story they'd be proudly telling whether an indescribable tragedy had happened there or not.
When you live in a small town and pore over every obituary in the local paper, you also know that every person is accounted for. Every face has a name; every name has a face. There are no statistics.
There’s nothing in the New Yorker article that isn’t devastating, but there is one section that haunts me in particular, a chilling paragraph about one small-town girl from Newtown who will likely try to escape a unique statistical label for the rest of her life:
“In the classroom closest to the school’s entrance, a first-grade teacher had hid her students in a bathroom and placed a bookcase against the door. The shooter, Adam Lanza, never entered. Instead, he walked into a second classroom, killing everyone except one girl. She had played dead and was standing in the room, covered in other people’s blood, when the police arrived.”
I wish everyone in Newtown peace, especially the families of those killed, and especially that little girl, who witnessed and survived things that most of us — small-towners, big-city dwellers, sanitized suburbanites — will never know.
We You I
We.
We play at our centers.
We do our Do-Nows.
We forever-jinx each other as we recite our spelling words out loud.
We sit criss-cross applesauce on the alphabet rug. Our legs never get tired.
We sneak orange Tic Tacs to each other. Mint Tic Tacs are gross.
We chase each other on the playground — boys versus the girls.
We get what we get and we don’t get upset.
We get upset. We forget why. We're laughing.
We maul our Little Bites and cheese sticks with our half-toothless mouths.
We hug and pull and jab and joke.
We hug and pull and jab and joke.
We giggle and cry and tattle and poke.
We pretend we’re PowerPuff Girls and Pokémon.
We play …
We pretend …
You.
I play.
I pretend.
I.
