Sandy Hook Survivors Are Graduating High School & Paying Respect to Fallen Classmates
High school seniors Emma Ehrens and Grace Fischer will hear their names read out today as they are called to collect their diplomas and start the next chapter of their lives.
But they are also steeling themselves to hear 20 other names of former classmates who never got to leave first grade, let alone plan for college and grow into adulthood.
Today is the day that the 20 children massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 would have graduated, perhaps cheered on by the six teachers and administrators also killed in the deadliest K-12 shooting in US history.
“It’s just going to be heartbreaking,” Grace told CNN. “I can’t imagine that 20 kids are not graduating with us and that they’re not having the opportunity to walk across the stage.”
Emma said she’s trying to prepare herself for a range of emotions – the joy at leaving school, nerves about what’s next and reflecting on what should have been.
“Thinking about all the what ifs: what if they were sitting next to me at graduation, what if we were still friends, where would we be? It’s just going to be a lot of what ifs in my head,” she said.
With gun violence the leading cause of death for children in the United States, and with shootings inside schools continuing to claim the lives of students and teachers while devastating communities in places like Uvalde, Texas; Parkland, Florida; Nashville, Tennessee; and Santa Fe, Texas – all since Newtown – many other students may be faced with their own “what ifs.”
Newtown High School’s Class of 2024 will be wearing green and white ribbons on their graduation gowns, each inscribed with “Forever In Our Hearts” to remember the children and adults who were killed while the new graduates survived, because they happened to be in a different classroom or got an extra few seconds to escape.
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