Amish Grace

Our narrative of Amish grace came to a close in November 2006. Since then, the Nickel Mines community has returned to “a new normal” that includes joy, sadness, occasional fears, expressions of courage, and moments of grace.

By Christmas 2006, four of the five injured girls had returned to school and were functioning well despite their serious injuries. One of the girls successfully completed all the homework she had missed in the weeks after the shooting. Although some of the girls faced additional reconstructive surgeries and months of rehabilitation, by spring 2009, two of them had completed their eighth-grade studies and graduated from school. In the words of an Amish leader, “The four of them will be able to live [physically] normal lives, even the one with seven bullet wounds.”

The recovery of the most seriously injured girl continues very slowly. She remains in the care of her parents, at home, and shows small signs of improvement. Fed by a tube, she is not able to walk or talk but does smile and recognize certain people despite suffering some seizures. She attends a non-Amish public school for special-needs children.

The healing process has also been slow for some of the older boys who were taken hostage in the schoolhouse and then expelled by the gunman. Several experienced the feelings of survivors’ guilt—including blaming themselves for not stopping the shooting that took the lives of some of their sisters and friends. The one who suffered the most was hospitalized in summer 2007 for anorexia and other symptoms of emotional trauma.

School itself resumed very quickly after the shooting, first in a temporary facility on a nearby Amish property. By late February 2007, Amish carpenters had a new school under roof. Located about a half mile from the old school, the new building sits in a more secluded spot, close to several homes and away from the road. The pupils moved into New Hope School, on Monday, April 2, exactly six months after the tragedy. The ratio of girls to boys gradually rebalanced as some pupils transferred from a nearby Amish school, the older boys graduated, and new families moved into the area.

Emma continued to teach at New Hope School for two years but stopped at the close of the school year in May 2008 because she thought a change would be best for the students and herself. A year later, in fall 2009, she began teaching again at the nearby Wolf Rock Amish School. The young woman who replaced her at New Hope School in fall 2008 had graduated from the Nickel Mines School a few years before the tragedy.

The forgiveness and grace of October 2006 were first steps in an ongoing, sometimes awkward, but always insistent effort at reconciliation—at mending the relationships so strained by the shooting. The emotional meeting at the Bart Firehouse at the end of October between Charles Roberts’s relatives and the Amish families was not their final contact. For example, Roberts’s widow, Amy, drove one of the mothers to visit her injured daughter, recovering in a hospital, and at Christmastime, the Amish schoolchildren went to the Roberts home to sing carols. Amy and members of her family also visited New Hope School in spring 2007. Eventually, Amy remarried and moved a few miles away from Georgetown. She spoke publicly about her healing and spiritual journey for the first time at a community-wide ecumenical gathering in October 2009.

Charles Roberts’s parents visited the temporary school, attended an Amish school Christmas program, and in winter 2007 visited in the homes of the Amish parents involved in the tragedy. In addition, the gunman’s parents hosted a picnic and swimming party at their home for the surviving children and parents that summer. Since then, Roberts’s mother has hosted teas for the mothers and grandmothers of the children who died or were injured. In an extraordinary act of grace, she also visits the most severely injured girl weekly, reading and singing to her and sometimes bathing her. One Amish parent, reflecting on the graceful response of the Roberts family, said, “Their kindness has helped us a lot in the healing process.”

The pain from the trauma has faded but the memories linger. “The half-year mark was pretty rough on some of us,” observed one Amish woman. Certain images, sounds, and words still provoke anxious thoughts and reactions. Some adults still flinch at the sound of helicopters flying in the area. Finding a new normal has taken time and hard work. Several new babies born to parents who lost children in the shooting have helped the quest to return to normal living.

The parents of the schoolchildren have found meaningful support among Amish and English friends and particularly among one another. The mothers meet periodically to share their grief and find encouragement. Some of the fathers get together too, but on a less regular schedule. A father who lost a daughter said, “We get our most support just meeting and talking with the other parents.” Most of the families and surviving children received support and guidance from professional counselors in the aftermath. About six months after the shooting, one church leader noted, “We are still processing some anger, but we are moving in the direction of forgiveness.”

At the first anniversary, in October 2007, the school was closed and one of the parents who lost a child hosted a gathering for families involved in the tragedy as well as the state police commissioner, police officers, and some of the first responders. Later anniversaries were quietly observed by informal gatherings and visiting in some of the homes. In keeping with Amish sentiments of humility, no ongoing public commemoration has been established or historical markers erected to memorialize the tragedy. Nonetheless, the memory of the story is often retold in the oral traditions of Amish communities across the country. Some of the parents have been invited to meet with and console Amish victims of various tragedies in other Amish communities.

Members of the broader Nickel Mines community continue to support one another and their Amish neighbors in many ways. In summer 2007, a picnic, or what locals called a reunion, was held for police officers, fire company personnel, emergency responders, Amish parents and families, and the Roberts family. An Amish artist crafted a large wooden plaque for the event, with messages of gratitude for the state police. Pupils from the West Nickel Mines School used a wood-burning pen to inscribe their names on the plaque, which was presented to the police at the reunion. Amish families have been keenly grateful for the continuing support and presence of the state police in the Nickel Mines area, which has helped them regain a sense of security in their daily lives.

Financial gifts still trickle in to the Accountability Committee, which has now received some $4.7 million from donors around the world. The committee supervises a trust fund that supports therapy for the physical and psychological needs of the victims and their families.

Beyond its initial reverberations around the world, the Nickel Mines forgiveness story continues to touch and inspire many people. Educators, pastors, and victims of violence from Russia, Israel, Switzerland, Brazil, South Africa, Lebanon, Argentina, and elsewhere have come to Nickel Mines to learn about forgiveness and reconciliation. For several months, a patchwork comfort quilt hung in the local firehouse. Made by students in Ohio for the children of 9/11 victims in New Jersey, the quilt had been sent to survivors of Hurricane Katrina and then to Nickel Mines. In August 2007, a bus of Amish people took the comfort quilt to Virginia Tech University, where they shared it with family and friends related to the shooting on that campus in April 2007.

Whether the Amish witness in Nickel Mines has made the world—even small corners of it—more forgiving is difficult to assess. Many people remain interested in the Amish response, some continue to be inspired by it, and still others publicly praise it when they have the chance. Of course, the Amish in and around Nickel Mines would be the first to remind us that their expressions of grace in the face of tragedy were not performed to elicit responses from others. Rather, as one Amish leader remarked at the time, their extension of forgiveness was simply “the right thing to do.” Four years later, the Nickel Mines Amish still believe that to be true.