Words and Light

Well, I thought I was okay.

Sometime between mid-January and late March, I had ceased thinking about Newtown on an hourly or daily basis. The holiday season was finally over, I got to meet my baby niece, Jeff and I were taking ballroom dance lessons and I was back in the swing of regular work.

But near the end of March, I had a dream: I was back in Newtown, and I was interviewing a florist as she was preparing spray arrangements for a child’s funeral. Suddenly, I felt my eyes burn hot with tears, and my mind went blank. I quickly turned away for a moment, then faced her again.

“I’m so sorry,” I told her. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

Then I woke up.

Later that day, another reporter who had been in Newtown wrote a blog post in which he explained his reluctance to talk much about his experiences:

1.) I’ve been nervous that [this] just comes across as me complaining about my own personal situation.

2.) I’ve felt a certain amount of guilt for feeling so badly when there are obviously people who were directly and significantly affected by what happened far more than I can imagine.

Additionally, I’ve wanted to distance myself a little from my coverage in Newtown. It’s not a fun thing to talk about so I largely avoid it, though there are times when I’m drinking with buddies that things will slip out. 

That basically sums up my feelings.

But now I feel ready to share some of the pictures I made while in Newtown. It could be that the warmer weather and sunshine are helping me overcome the dreariness of that trip. It could be that I’m actually getting okay-er over time. Or it could be that it’s simply time to do this now.

…December 15, 2012

Lauren and I had arrived in New Haven the previous night and slept for maybe six hours. The next six or so hours after we reported for work were fairly hectic and confusing. I was assigned to profile the school psychologist who had been killed, but after we’d knocked on doors all over her neighborhood and — along with a Wall Street Journal reporter and Bloomberg reporter we encountered on her street — felt like the most horrible people on the planet, we decided we’d had enough: We decided to strike out on our own.

So, at about 2 p.m., we went to Newtown for the first time, to do a profile of the town as a town of its own merits, not as a town defined by tragedy.

As we rolled into Newtown, I spotted a line of white objects neatly placed in the middle of a field. We pulled over.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. One of 20 votive candles sits in the park area of Ram Pasture in Newtown, Conn., presumably as a memorial to the 20 children killed when a gunman went on a rampage in nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School.

And we met Ron, a friendly groundskeeper who filled us in a little on the history of Newtown.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Ron Nicholson — a groundskeeper for Ram Pasture, a park and cemetery in Newton, Conn. — picks up small tree limbs and branches that fell during Hurricane Sandy, on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. Nicholson said Newtown residents traditionally receive a votive candle around the holiday season every year, and this morning he saw people setting up 20 of those votive candles in the middle of the park — presumably as a memorial for the 20 children killed when a gunman went on a rampage in nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Ron gave us directions to Sandy Hook Elementary: Go up the main road, turn right at the flagpole in the middle of town and keep going. Seems pretty simple, but that’s just how Newtown is. Small. Simple. Friendly.

But once on the road toward the school, we ended up sitting in traffic for so long that we knew we could be making more use of our time elsewhere. Seeing a sign for a Christmas tree farm, I turned left and drove along a hilly, semi-rural, two-lane road until we found the farm, where we then found families making an attempt at yuletide normalcy.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Three miles north of Newtown lies Medridge Tree Farm, where about 100 acres’ worth of Christmas trees are available for customers to roam in search of their tree.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Tracy Millander of Sandy Hook, left, ties up a Christmas tree with help from her son Jason Benson, 6, and Medridge Tree Farm worker Frederika Leet on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, at the farm. Leet, who works as an occupational therapist, was helping out customers at the farm on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, and said although she has no children of her own, the previous day’s shootings at nearby Sandy Hook Elementary School troubled her because she sees her young patients almost as her own children.

On our way back towards Newtown, we stopped to capture just one of the many signs of support on display:

© by Digital First Media. A bouquet of flowers sits underneath a sheet that was tied to the Church Hill Road overpass over Interstate 84 and that said, “We love you Sandy Hook Elementary,” on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012.

Then we walked around town a bit, to get a feel for the place. Our impressions since Ram Pasture had not changed: Small. Simple. Friendly.

© by Digital First Media. The movie “Arthur Christmas” was scheduled to be shown at the Edmond Town Hall Movie Theater on Dec. 14-20 in Newtown, but signs posted on the building’s door and here at the ticket office on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, indicated that the ongoing event has been canceled.

After talking to several people at several different retail locations, we found ourselves at…

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Exterior of Everything Newtown, a gift store on Church Hill Road.

Yes — Newtown has its own souvenir store.

And its own line of greeting cards:

© 2012 by Digital First Media. These greeting cards are just several of many Newtown, Conn.-branded items for sale in the Church Hill Road store Everything Newtown.

Small. Simple. Friendly.

Store co-owner Teri Brunelli showed Lauren and me around the store. There were Newtown shirts, Newtown baseball caps, Newtown Christmas ornaments, Newtown mugs, Newtown magnets. It really was “Everything Newtown.”

“Newtown,” Teri said, “is a very proud community. People in Newtown and Sandy Hook love Newtown and Sandy Hook.”

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Teri Brunelli, co-owner of the gift shop Everything Newtown, stands for a portrait among just a few Newtown, Conn.-branded items available in her Church Hill Road store on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012. Brunelli said that in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, people have asked her to place her Newtown-branded items on the Internet for sale — an action she is loath to do because she does not want to commercialize the shooting.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Everything Newtown sales associate Christine Diorio, left, and co-owner Teri Brunelli, right, blow up white balloons that a customer ordered for an evening vigil on Saturday, Dec. 15, 2012, the day after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Brunelli said the people of Sandy Hook and Newtown, prior to the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, were her primary customers.

After we left Everything Newtown, we left Newtown and turned in our work for the day.

That was just the first day.

…December 16, 2012

Sunday morning, I was assigned to do video of church services at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church, which is the largest church in town. Then Lauren and I were assigned a story about funeral preparations. We talked to funeral home directors and florists. We tried to talk to gravediggers and cemetery employees, and I was personally relieved that we were unable to do so.

I was going to write that Sunday was the worst day — because trying to talk to people digging graves for children is just… well, anyway — but then I remembered how we had knocked on doors on Saturday. And Tuesday hadn’t even happened yet.

So Sunday may not have been the worst day, but it wasn’t a good day either.

[UPDATED — 6:17 a.m., April 6, 2013] Only after posting this did I remember that Sunday wasn’t entirely bad. After Lauren and I filed our work from the day, a video editor approached me about getting video of people’s reactions from the president’s speech, which he would make that night in the high school. So, as a nighttime mist began to fall, Lauren and I headed out… and got stuck on an on-ramp to the interstate just in time to see, alongside other drivers who got out of their cars, the president’s motorcade race past us.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. As Tami Wityak, far right, watches, Allie Wityak and Lara Stauff, center, use their phones to take video from a highway entrance ramp as President Barack Obama’s motorcade passes by on Interstate 84 on Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012. The three had gone Christmas shopping and were returning to their Southbury homes when they missed their exit, had to turn around and ended up having to park on the ramp to allow the president’s motorcade to pass.

Lauren and I ended up at a bar — one of only two or three within five miles of Newtown that turned up in my Google search — and got permission, alongside a BBC crew, from the manager and owner to spend time with their guests in the bar once the speech began.

Teri had been emphatic about how proud the people of Newtown and Sandy Hook are, and after covering the guests in the bar, I believe it. The entire area went silent as Barack Obama’s face filled the 17 TVs, and I saw that customers and wait staff in the restaurant area were also focused, hard, on the screens closer to them. Every time the president made mention of the resilience and strong community of Newtown, people clapped. They held hands. They embraced each other. They wiped tears from their eyes.

I had never seen such fierce hometown pride before — at least, apart from sports situations — nor had I ever beheld such strong positive reactions to a televised speech.

Due to some communication errors, both on my and the video editor’s parts, my video didn’t make it into the final cut that she produced. But even though I have little to show for myself from that night, I’ll never forget the ardent pride and love those people showed for their town. [END UPDATE]

…December 17, 2012

Monday, we were assigned to focus on “acts of kindness.” After feeling like horrible human beings for most of Sunday, we decided to stay out of Newtown. So we reported out of neighboring Monroe.

© 2012 by Digital Fist Media. Angel ornaments and other religious items hang from a tree outside the religious gift shop Angels & Company in Monroe, Conn., just seven miles out of Newtown. Midge Saglimbene said she and another business owner decorated the tree with such ornaments after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

We found a teddy bear drive organized by a church that was already operating several Christmas-related outreach drives. We ran into a local official who told us, “NBC called. I’m supposed to call them back, but I’d rather talk to you because you’re real,” and then began to give us all sorts of quotes. We discovered a religious gift shop whose co-owner opened its doors to anyone who needed a hug and a prayer.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Midge Saglimbene, a co-owner of the religious gift shop Angels & Company, helps customer Colleen Coyle of Trumbull with her purchases on Monday, Dec. 17, 2012, in Monroe, Conn., just seven miles from Newtown. Saglimbene said people have come to her store to purchase angel figurines, tokens and other religious items as gifts for the families of the recent Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, or to be left at vigils. “You never know when one little thing is going to help,” Saglimbene said. “If you feel it in your heart, just do it.”

After encountering so much humanity in the midst of so much pain, I knew we couldn’t go another day without going to the school. So we drove, once again, into Newtown. Once again, into the traffic surrounding Sandy Hook. We left our notepads and cameras in the car and walked to the school’s driveway, where we paid our respects and where the only photo I took was this:

Then we left Sandy Hook and returned to the temporary newsroom, where we filed our day’s work.

…December 18, 2012

Tuesday had arrived.

I was assigned to cover funerals at St. Rose of Lima for video.

I remember, as I parked across the street, that I felt sick to my stomach.

The nausea was made worse when, later, I saw that school buses of young children had no choice but to pass the church on their routes.

© 2012 by Digital First Media.

The only levity provided that cold, wet, gray morning was this police officer’s handlebar:

© 2012 by Digital First Media.

One of the two funerals that morning was James Mattioli’s, and while I stood miserably outside the church, Lauren found someone who had known James: His hairstylist, Marci Benitez.

So after the funerals were over, Lauren took me to Marci’s salon, where we met her and her husband. She was from Brooklyn. He was from the Bronx. They came to Connecticut so their children could have a backyard. They used to laugh that they were surrounded by pick-up trucks. Then 9/11 happened, and the pick-up trucks and farms began to give way to Audis and wealthy developments.

A grown customer walked into the shop. Marci gave him a haircut. Her husband talked shop with him. I noticed that both were commenting on the heavy media presence, and they didn’t necessarily have positive experiences to report.

After the customer left, Lauren and I sat down. With Marci’s permission, I turned on my video camera, and she told us her story. Towards the end, she was weeping, but she remained calm and in control. I turned the camera off, and she told us some more. We stood up. She would not let us leave without giving each of us a strong hug.

© 2012 by Digital First Media. Marci Benitez, owner of and stylist at Fun Kuts in Sandy Hook, stands for a portrait at her hair-cutting station on Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012. James Mattioli, 6, never showed up for his 9:15 a.m. appointment with Benitez on Saturday, Dec. 15. Benitez learned later that Mattioli was one of 20 children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting the day before.

That was our last full day in Newtown, Conn.

…

Those were all the pictures I have to share. If you are so interested, Lauren has compiled the articles that we reported and that she wrote, and this blog post contains all the videos I produced.

I don’t know that there’s more for me to say about those days, especially after having written this and this.

I’m just doing my best to forget that we had to knock on doors and try to talk to gravediggers.

But above all, I’m wishing so hard that this had never happened, and hoping so hard that this never happens again.