Posted on 10/05/2006 10:16:09 AM PDT by Graybeard58
GEORGETOWN, Pa. - A procession of 34 buggies and carriages carried mourners to a hilltop cemetery Thursday as the Amish community buried the first of five girls killed by a gunman inside their tiny one-room schoolhouse.
Two state troopers on horseback and a funeral director's black sedan with flashing yellow lights led the cortege, followed by a long horse-drawn buggy carrying the body of 7-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersol.
The route wove past the home of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the 32-year-old milk truck driver who took the girls hostage Monday morning, tied them up and then shot them. One Amish man craned his head out a buggy window to look at the home.
It was the first in a series of funerals Thursday for victims of the West Nickel Mines Amish School shooting. All roads leading into the village of Nickel Mines were blocked by state police so the Amish could gather privately in homes to remember Ebersol; Marian Fisher, 13; and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7.
The funeral for a fifth girl, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, was scheduled for Friday.
Five other girls survived the schoolhouse attack but were seriously injured.
County coroner G. Gary Kirchner said he had been contacted by a doctor at Penn State Children's Hospital in Hershey who said doctors expected to take one girl off life support so she could be brought home. Dr. D. Holmes Morton, who runs a clinic that serves Amish children, said Thursday that the reports that a 6-year-old had been taken off life-support and taken home to die were accurate "as far as I know."
"I just think at this point mostly these families want to be left alone in their grief and we ought to respect that," Morton said.
National mourning of similar tragedies, such as the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado, has been enabled in part by media coverage - something the Amish generally shun.
In Lancaster County, there have been prayer services for the Amish school shooting victims at area churches, but the traditional funerals for the girls were closed. About 300 to 500 people were expected at each, said funeral director Philip W. Furman.
Amish custom calls for simple wooden caskets, narrow at the head and feet and wider in the middle. An Amish girl is typically laid to rest in a white dress, a cape, and a white prayer-covering on her head, Furman said.
The girls' families, Amish neighbors and friends are coping with the slayings by looking inward, relying on themselves and their faith, just as they have for centuries, to get them through what one Amish bishop called "our 9/11."
"They know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent ... and they know that they will join them in death," said Gertrude Huntington, a Michigan researcher who has written a book about children in Amish society.
"The hurt is very great," Huntington said. "But they don't balance the hurt with hate."
In just about any other community, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands from civic leaders for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims' loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman's family or threatened to sue.
But that's not the Amish way.
In the aftermath of Monday's violence, the Amish have reached out to the family of the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, who committed suicide during the attack in a one-room schoolhouse.
Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them. Among Roberts' survivors are his wife and three children.
"I hope they stay around here and they'll have a lot of friends and a lot of support," said Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the attack.
Roberts' relatives may even receive money from a fund established to help victims and their families, said Kevin King, executive director of Mennonite Disaster services, an agency managing the donations.
Though the Amish generally do not accept help from outside their community, King quoted an Amish bishop as saying, "We are not asking for funds. In fact, it's wrong for us to ask. But we will accept them with humility."
The attack on West Nickel Mines Amish School began Monday morning when Roberts took over the one-room school, sent the adults and boys out and bound the 10 remaining girls at the blackboard. He was in the school for about an hour before he shot his hostages and turned the gun on himself as police closed in.
State police have said Roberts might have been planning to sexually assault the Amish girls but there was no evidence that he actually did.
Roberts had revealed to his wife in a note left behind the day of the attacks and in a cell phone call from inside the school that he was tormented by memories of molesting two young relatives 20 years ago and dreamed of molesting again. But police said Wednesday there was no evidence of any such sexual abuse.
Investigators spoke to the two relatives Roberts named, who would have been 4 or 5 at the time, and said neither recalled being sexually assaulted by Roberts.
"They were absolutely sure they had no contact with Roberts," said state police Trooper Linette Quinn.
There is talk among the Amish of tearing down the schoolhouse, which is now boarded up, said Daniel Esh, 57, an Amish artist and woodworker. He said he is certain the community will decide to replace and not reopen the schoolhouse.
On the roads into Nickel Mines early Thursday, families in traditional Amish dress, broad-brimmed hats and bonnets walked on foot and traveled in horse-drawn buggies. The clip-clop of the horses was broken up only by the roar of official helicopters overhead enforcing a no-fly zone over the region.
In Washington, President Bush discussed plans for a conference on school safety next week involving federal officials, school workers, parents and law enforcement.
"It is paramount that the federal government work with the state government and local governments to make it clear that our schools are places of learning and not places where there would be violence," Bush said.
There simply aren't words to describe this assault on simple people and their children. God save us all.
Hate the sin, love the sinner. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
What a witness those people have become for Christ to the world. Maybe that was the reason for the girls' sacrifice, only God knows.
LORD: Make us "more Amish". Amen.
LORD: I plead with You to please make us "more Amish". Amen.
I'm glad to read they did do the no-fly zone.
God, please help ease the hurt of all the families affected, and thank You for blessing those with the knowledge and comfort and strength of Your eternal love, and working through them to illustrate to us the strength You give us when we suffer here on earth, and show their faith in the reward You offer us after our brief earthly life is over. We celebrate that these girls are now in Your presence, and grieve with their parents who miss them, but know they too will join them again, with You, in heaven. And although we may feel sad, and hurt, and bewildered by actions taken that we cannot understand, help us remain faithful in You that Your hand guides all things, and we continue to share Your Word to steer those who don't know You to Your love and to everlasting life.
You have FRmail. :-)
answered..hug (notice my tagline isnt very amish)
Great tag line. ;-)
They are walking the Christian walk. Many of their simple ways are actually just keeping themselves unspotted from the world's influence on their minds. By refusing t.v., they automatically eliminate a huge amount of smut and violence from their lives. There is so much violence on just about all the shows on t.v. that gradually people become not only numb to it, but also instructed in a how-to by the endless, graphic "crime scene investigation" type blow-by-blow video accounts of crimes.
I thought the same.
Amen!
Hate doesn't balance anything. Hate denies the healing mercy of Christ a place in your heart, prolonging and deepening the hurt.
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