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Mourning the Amish Tragedy
October 4, 2006
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Grieving in Silence
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Milk Truck-DriverExecuted Children in Pennsylvania Amish Schoolhouse
Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge, stormed into a
one-room Amish schoolhouse on Monday, sent the boys and adults outside, barricaded the doors with two-by-fours
and then opened fire on a dozen girls. Roberts killed some of the girls and critically injured others, before turning a
gun upon himself and committing suicide. The latest reports state that six of the girls have died and the death toll
might rise. Most of the children were shot execution-style at point-blank range after being lined up along the
chalkboard inside the schoolhouse, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties. The shooting occurred around 10:45
a.m. on Monday in Nickel Mines, which is located in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country.
On the evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to talk about their
feelings of grief with each other and mental health counselors. According to reports by counselors who attended the
grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school
tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise
outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a
horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish
dont automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.
The Funeral Services
Funeral services for many of the children are being held on Thursday. In the aftermath of Mondays violence, the
Amish are looking inward, relying on themselves and their faith, just as they have for centuries. They hold
themselves apart from the modern world, and have as little to do with civil authorities as possible. Amish mourners
have been going from home to home for two days to attend viewings for the five victims, all little girls laid out in
white dresses made by their families. Such viewings occur almost immediately after the bodies arrive at the parents
homes.
Typically, they are so crowded, if you start crying, youve got to figure out whose shoulder to cry on, said a
Mennonite midwife who delivered two of the five girls slain in the attack. At some Amish viewings, upwards of
1,000 to 1,500 people might visit a familys home to pay respects. Such visits are important, given the lack of e-mail
and phone communication.
Update: In Thursdays Amish funeral ceremonies, made even more touching and heartbreaking by centuries-old
simplicity, four of the little girls were buried as the Amish of Pennsylvania turned the other cheek. With television
and newspaper cameras kept at a distance, and police helicopters enforcing a no-fly zone overhead, one of the few
non-Amish guests invited to the funeral of seven-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersole, the first little girl to be buried, was
Marie Roberts, the killers wife.
With tears in her eyes, Mrs. Roberts sat in the back of one of the 34 black horse-drawn carriages that were part of the
funeral cortege behind Naomis horse-drawn hearse. On the way from the church to the hilltop cemetary, the
procession passed Mrs Roberts home where her husband, Charles, loaded up his guns before heading for the little
village school on Monday.
On Saturday, Amish mourners joined family and friends for the funeral of the Pennsylvania truck driver who killed
five Amish girls before taking his own life. Charles Carl Roberts IV was laid to rest in the graveyard of the
Georgetown United Methodist Church, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The cemetery is not far from the school
where the shootings took place and the Amish graveyard where his victims are buried. The Amish who came to the
burial gave condolences to Roberts wife and three children.
Also on Saturday, local Amish leaders met to discuss the future of the West Nickel Mines School. Mike Hart, one of
two non-Amish members of a board set up to handle donations following the killings, said the plan is to build a new
school in a different location.
As part of their traditional manner during times of crisis, the deeply-religious villagers of Nickel Mines,
Pennsylvania, turned inwards for support yesterday with prayers before, during and after each of the three
ceremonies. As a Quaker, I have an empathic sense for the devout, private and quiet commitment to
passivism and peace shared by members of The Old Order Amish. My kindest thoughts are with the Amish
people as they embark upon the mutually reciprocal journey of healing themselves.
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