Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy (7 page)

The care demonstrated by their English neighbors made a deep impression on the Amish. “I can’t put into words what the people are doing for our community,” wrote a Georgetown correspondent in
Die Botschaft.
²“The police tried to keep the newsmen away. Fire companies and ambulance people were here from far around. Almost all the roads were closed around here almost all last week to keep the tourists and the newsmen away.” He continued, “Words can’t express what the English are doing for our people. We’re getting cards and letters from all over the world. A lot of people gathered at the firehouse…. Some were neighbors and others were total strangers.”

Indeed, outsiders who wondered if the tragedy would drive a wedge between the Amish and the English needed only to look inside the firehouse: Amish and state police officers worked side by side; Amish and non-Amish women prepared and served meals together. As a result, the cultural barriers between the Amish and the English diminished somewhat in the wake of the shooting. Everyone, both Amish and English, agreed that the incident drew them closer together. “We were all Amish this week,” said one Amish man.

The Amish also received support from more distant places. On impulse, several out-of-state grief counselors boarded a plane for Pennsylvania, hoping to help the grieving families. Philadelphia residents offered housing to Amish families so they could stay near their hospitalized children. A manufacturer of playground equipment pledged to donate all the outside equipment for a new Amish school. Some outsiders, demonstrating a remarkable degree of sensitivity, inquired whether their gifts would be culturally appropriate. Students and teachers at an elementary school in Florida who were preparing a box of school supplies for the surviving children asked whether they could include a globe, crayons, and coloring books, or whether such items might be offensive. Their gifts, in fact, fit the culture perfectly.

Some of the goodwill came in response to previous acts of grace. After Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005, fifty Amish carpenters went to Picayune, Mississippi, to repair the roofs of hurricane-damaged homes. When the residents of Picayune heard about the school shooting, they wanted to return the favor. Despite their ongoing struggle to recover from Katrina, the people of Picayune presented the Amish community with a check for $11,000. Some expressions of care had even deeper roots. In 1972, after the destructive floods of Hurricane Agnes, Amish people helped to clean up the mud and mess in devastated areas of central Pennsylvania. Thirty-four years later, people in several of those communities called and asked what they could do to return the kindness.

Hundreds of phone calls flooded the Bart Township Fire Company, from people asking how to help and where to send money. The Georgetown branch of the Coatesville Savings Bank quickly set up two funds: the Nickel Mines Children’s Fund and the Roberts Family Fund. Other banks and charitable organizations also established funds. In one example of the many community fund-raisers that were organized after the tragedy, three thousand motorcyclists came to Lancaster County on a ride named “Because We Care” and raised $34,000 for the families of the victims.

With the avalanche of gifts growing hourly, it soon became clear that coordination was needed. Two days after the shooting, sixteen Amish and English leaders met at the Bart firehouse to develop a response. Within a few hours they had formed the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee and appointed nine men—seven Amish and two English—to serve on it. The leaders elected two Amish men to serve as chair and vice chair and asked Herman Bontrager, a local Mennonite leader, to be the committee’s spokesperson.

“We are not asking for aid, but we will receive it,” the Accountability Committee explained at the outset. The long-standing Amish tradition of mutual aid that encourages members to care for one another in time of need also discourages them from relying too heavily on aid from non-Amish people and outside agencies. For this reason, they reject commercial insurance and, with a few exceptions, do not participate in Social Security. In this case, however, the Nickel Mines shooting trumped tradition. “The whole nation is grieving,” said one Amish leader. “By letting them give, it helps them too.” The committee therefore agreed to accept outside donations so that others wouldn’t be deprived “of the blessing of giving.”

In a public statement released a few days later, the Nickel Mines Accountability Committee thanked the local community for its many expressions of love. “Each act of kindness, the prayers and every gift,” wrote the committee, “comfort us and assure us that our spirits will heal, even though the painful loss will always be with us.” After thanking the standard list of helpers—police, emergency workers, medical providers, and church and community groups—the committee extended its gratitude to one more group, which may have surprised some people: the news media. The media “helped the world grapple with values that are dear to us—forgiveness, nonviolence, mutual care, simplicity,” the committee wrote, and demonstrated many “acts of kindness” even while doing their reporting work. Finally, the committee reported that financial contributions would be used for medical and counseling services, transportation needs, rehabilitation, disability care, “and other expenses resulting from the event.” Within several months of the tragedy, the committee had received $4 million from contributors around the world.

The generosity of neighbors and compassionate strangers around the world stirred a deep sense of gratitude among the Amish. The front-page headline of a weekly Amish newspaper proclaimed “THANK YOU.” The accompanying editorial began with special thanks to the state police commissioner, Jeffrey Miller, for his work during the crisis. The column also extended warm thanks to a host of professionals and volunteers “for their quick action in their protection of our privacy during the days of sorrowing and grief . . . and the many unselfish hours they volunteered to keep law and order in the community.” The editorial ended by thanking “the whole community, both English and Amish, for everything that was done to help carry this burden . . . [and] all people of all nations around the world, for all the donations that have been sent to us and for all the prayers that have been offered on our behalf.”

The parents of one of the deceased girls, in a letter to a Lancaster newspaper, echoed the gratitude: “We will never forget the feelings of protection and comfort it gave us to have the state police protecting us from the hungry media on our way to the burial services of our daughter. . . . There are many other things to be thankful for, and even in our sorrow, we are counting our blessings. And we thank the whole nation for prayer support.”

Some Amish people acknowledged that they might have underestimated the potential goodness of outsiders. In a letter to the editor of the
Philadelphia Inquirer,
an Amish father admitted, “Our perceptions of ‘worldly’ and ‘outsiders’ have been challenged and changed. It has been reaffirmed to us that there is much good in the rest of the world.” He continued his letter by noting, “It is reassuring that in spite of our different identities we can still reach out to each other as human brothers and sisters with the same hopes, fears, desires, and feelings in difficult times.”

To be sure, Amish writers continued to emphasize the primary importance of their own church community. “We are thankful to have such a sharing community and church, where there is Christian fellowship under an Almighty and loving, caring Savior and God,” wrote the editor of one Amish newspaper. Indeed, the Amish families most directly affected by the shooting relied on their fellow church members as their chief source of support and, compared to what many grief-stricken people experience, they received extraordinary care. Unlike the English, who donated playground equipment, teddy bears, and money, the Amish caregivers offered more modest gifts: meals, quiet words of condolence, and often just the gift of presence. On October 3 and 4, hundreds of family members and friends streamed into the homes of the bereaved parents. Drawing on the bonds of kinship, these visitors responded to the parents’ unimaginable grief with heartfelt gestures of support.

Despite the tragic circumstances, the viewings conformed to typical Amish practice. After a death in the Amish community, an English mortician takes the body to a funeral home, embalms it, and then promptly returns it to the home, where family members dress the body in preparation for burial. Young girls are usually dressed in white and wear a white head covering as they lie in a simple wooden coffin. In keeping with the Amish tradition of being candid about death, the girls’ coffins were open, a reminder to those filing by of the schoolhouse horror only a few days past.

At word of a death, members of the local church district assume the chores for the grieving family, freeing them to meet with the hundreds of friends and relatives who visit in the days before the funeral. Mary, a young mother, explained, “Often at a viewing many people just shake hands but don’t say anything. I often say, ‘We will think about you a lot.’ I don’t say, ‘I’m praying for you,’ because that would sound too proud.” A minister agreed: “When you visit parents during these viewings, it’s just your presence. Just be there a few moments and then leave. Just a few moments of silence.”

In the Lancaster Amish settlement, viewings are open to anyone, but funerals are typically for invited guests only. A friend or relative, on behalf of the bereaved family, issues invitations to the funeral by word of mouth. To accommodate the large number of people in attendance—often three hundred or more—the funeral service is usually conducted in a barn or large shop. A small, private service is held first in the home, followed by the large, formal funeral.

The funerals for the five girls took place three and four days after the shooting. Three of the funerals—for Naomi Rose, Marian, and the two sisters, Mary Liz and Lena—were held on Thursday, October 5. The funeral for Anna Mae was held on Friday, October 6. Like other Amish worship services, funeral services are usually conducted in Pennsylvania German. However, as a courtesy to English friends, visitors from Chicago, and police officers in attendance, one of the services included both German and English.

Along with sermons emphasizing the importance of yielding to God’s will, Amish funerals often include the reading, but not the singing, of a hymn. The song read at the funeral of seven-year-old Naomi Rose was “Ich war ein kleines Kindlein” (“I Was a Little Child”). The text underscores the uncertain nature of one’s earthly life and the blessed assurance to come:

I was a little child
Born into this world;
But my hour of death
God has sent quickly.
I have nothing to say
About the world and its doings;
I have in my days
needed nothing of that.
My most beloved father
Who begat me into the world,
And my dearest mother
Who has nursed me herself,
They follow me to the grave
With inward sighs;
Yet I was God’s gift
Which He now takes to Himself.
He takes me with grace
To an inheritance in His kingdom.
Death cannot harm me
I am like the angels;
My body shall live again
In rest and eternal joy,
And soar with my soul
In greater glory.

Following each of the four funeral services, a procession of some three dozen carriages wound its way through the village of Georgetown on its way to the Bart Amish Cemetery. Each procession was led by two state troopers on horseback and a horse-drawn hearse that carried the simple wooden coffin. As the processions passed the Bart firehouse, firefighters stood along the road and doffed their helmets. One of the killer’s relatives, who watched a procession pass his home, later recalled, “Neighbors, people, and families were embracing each other. There was just a lot of grace and sympathy.”

When each procession finally reached the cemetery, pallbearers carried the coffin to the open grave. After a brief service that included the reading of a hymn and a prayer, the body was lowered into the ground. The two sisters, Mary Liz and Lena, who were “very close” and “loved to play together,” according to their grandfather, were buried in separate coffins in the same grave.

The Amish were deeply touched that the state police provided mounted officers to lead and follow each procession. After arriving at the cemetery, the four officers barricaded the entrance, keeping a watchful eye out for intruders who might violate the privacy of the solemn moment. “It was a very humbling experience to see those mounted troopers. I just cried,” said an Amish businessman.

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