Mike Lawlor Talks Gun Legislation on Anniversary of Sandy Hook Shooting – Armchair Historians
If you listen to the podcast (Armchair Historians) you may have heard me talk about my home in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado however, prior to moving here in 2013 I lived in Newtown, CT for almost two decades. Of all the places I’ve lived, Newtown was the first to feel like home. I remember driving through the classic pastoral New England landscape dotted with colonial salt box houses for the first time. I felt an immediate connection in my cells, it was a weird almost longing. Several years later the town that hosted Rochambeau and his troops as they marched across Connecticut between Virginia and Providence, Rhode Island in 1781 and 1782 did in fact become my home.
Flash forward to May 2001 when I was hired as a supervisor for an internationally recognized coffee company to work in their Newtown store. It was there that my connection to the town and its people was solidified. Over the next 11 years I would build relationships with regulars that included school teachers, parents of elementary school children who would come to the coffee shop to wait for their kids to finish first communion classes at the Catholic Church next door, Father Bob from that church, several celebrities, local law enforcement and first responders etcetera.
On December 14, 2012 at around 10 am as I was registering for my final semester of grad school, I overheard a woman behind the registrar desk saying there had been a shooting in Newtown. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough, but was frustrated to find that none of the local radio stations available in my car were carrying the story, so I called my then boyfriend and asked him to get on the computer and do a search, which he did and read a couple of breaking news stories about the horrifying chain of events that had just played out at Sandy Hook Elementary School a school just half mile from the coffee shop.
It would come out that the son of one of my regular and favorite customers had shot his way through a glass panel next to the locked front entrance doors of Sandy Hook Elementary School armed with his mother’s Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle and ten magazines with 30 rounds each after shooting his mother with a .22-caliber Savage Mark II rifle. Apparently guns where the only way my customer and her son were able to bond. The shooter had a familiarity with and access to his mother’s firearms and ammunition. He also had an obsession with mass murders, in particular the April 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado.
I felt a sense of urgency to get to work even though I wasn’t scheduled for another few hours. In a very visceral way I needed to be there for my community and my staff.
Over the course of the next few hours I would come to serve parents of school aged children who gathered at the coffee shop until they could be reunited with their child because all of the local schools were in lockdown. Some of those parents would not be reunited with their children.
Lauren Rousseau, who also worked for the same coffee company as me, would valiantly loose her life that day. During the shooting, Rousseau herded her first-grade students into the restroom to hide from the shooter. The shooter found them and opened fire, killing Rousseau and fifteen of her students. Only one of them survived.
My daughter went to elementary school in Stratford CT with Vicki Soto who also valiantly lost her life trying to protect her students.
Over the coming days and weeks my staff and I would absorb the shock of a community that would never be the same again. Perhaps the worst memories for me are of the “funeral rushes.” That is the out-the-door-lines of customers attending the back to back funerals of grade schoolers conducted by Father Bob at St. Rose of Lima, the Catholic Church next door.
As you listen to this episode of Armchair Historians, I’d like you to think about what you are doing to bring about change for the future. Mike talks about “incremental change” which seems more attainable than a complete overhaul right now. I too will think about how I can take action in order to honor the precious lives taken on 12/14/12 and how I can be part of the discussion and how I can educate myself to use my vote for policy makers that are working to end gun violence in our country.
Six Loose Cannons 