Amish Grace

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.

On Saturday, the family and friends of Charles Carl Roberts IV gathered for his burial. Following a private service at a local funeral home, Roberts’s body was taken to the cemetery of the Georgetown United Methodist Church, a short three hundred yards from his home. There he was laid to rest beside the pink, heart-shaped gravestone of his infant daughter, Elise, whose death nine years earlier had tormented him for so long.

With the girls and their killer now buried, questions about the reason for Roberts’s rampage resurfaced. “We all keep asking why,” said Roberts’s grandfather-in-law, who had lived next door to him. “Everyone had a good word for Charlie, but he just lost his mind.” The brutal violence did not fit with what he knew about Roberts’s care for his children. Moreover, as far as he knew, the gunman “had no bad feelings against the Amish.” The only thing he could tie to Roberts’s behavior was his intense reserve. “He was very quiet. He would stand here in the driveway and throw the ball to the dog, but not say anything, not even to me. To get a conversation going, you had to start it.”

A possible explanation for his outburst came from the killer himself. When Roberts called his wife from the schoolhouse, he said he was plagued by memories of having molested two family members twenty years earlier. But this explanation, like every other, seemed insufficient to explain the rampage. In addition, the family members he referred to had no recollections of abuse.

One week to the day after the shooting, school classes for the surviving Amish children resumed in a garage on a nearby Amish property. To prepare for the move to the new location, parents, friends, and the surviving boys returned to the old schoolhouse in rented vans to retrieve their remaining books and supplies. Emergency workers had already cleaned up the blood and broken glass that had littered the floor. When the boys entered the building they went to the front, knelt down where the girls had been bound together, and poked their fingers through the bullet holes in the floor. Then they went to their desks to gather up their supplies. The parents searched the desks of their daughters to retrieve artwork, pencils, and any memorabilia they could find. The blackboard was taken down and, with its chalk lessons still intact, loaded into a waiting van.

Before they left the school, one of the parents asked an Amish bishop to say a prayer. “He wished us all God’s richest blessings and talked about how the Lord works in everything. Tears were flowing again, but these were tears of peace,” recalled an Amish witness. The bishop thanked the boys for showing the courage to return to the school and go through their desks; he then prayed the Lord’s Prayer. “It was such a sacred moment, such a sacred place,” said one Amish person. “I could just feel God’s power. There was lots of crying, and it was very, very sad, but on the other hand there was peace, peace. God’s presence was so real I could almost touch it.”

As they prepared to leave, the boys gathered around the rope of the school bell. They were eager to pull it at exactly 10:45 A.M., when churches across Lancaster County would ring their bells to mark the passing of the first week since the tragedy. A state policeman who was guarding the schoolhouse gave a nod at the exact time. With so many hands pulling so hard, the bell rang just once and then got stuck. Some of the boys scampered onto the roof and continued to ring it from up there.

Returning to the school was a healing experience, but it could not alter the fact that things had changed. Before leaving their old schoolyard, the boys began planning the location of the ball diamond they would create at the temporary school down the road. The West Nickel Mines School had two ball fields, so all of the children could play at the same time. Now it dawned on the boys that they would need only one, because ten of their classmates were missing.

One person who wasn’t missing, however, was their teacher. When the students reassembled in their makeshift classroom, Emma was there to meet them and resume her teaching duties. It would be best for her and for her scholars, she reasoned, if she were there to help them find their “new normal.”

Within days of the shooting, word had spread among the media that the Amish might raze the old school building. “Why would they do that?” asked one reporter. “Is it part of a religious ritual of purification?” The easy answer was no: the Amish do not have purification rituals. They simply did not want their children to be reminded of the terror of that hour, day after day, season after season, as they sat in a room where five of their peers had died and another five were wounded. The Amish were also concerned about the possibility that thousands of tourists would converge on White Oak Road to see the now historic site. “We want to move on,” said an Amish farmer. “The community doesn’t want all the publicity and all the tourists that would come to Nickel Mines if the school remained standing.” In short, common sense dictated demolition.

At 4:45 A.M. on October 12, ten days after the shooting, the teeth of a huge backhoe bit into the schoolhouse. In fifteen minutes it was rubble. Working in the early dawn under large spotlights, the demolition crew hoped to avoid the media glare. Nevertheless, a few photographers and a handful of Amish turned out to witness the destruction of this peculiar site of death.

Several weeks after the shooting, state police officers and Amish families gathered in the Bart firehouse on a Friday evening. The gathering was marked by the appearance of three of the surviving girls, who had recently returned home from the hospital. The girls recognized the troopers who had rescued them and rushed over to talk to them. “It was very emotional. It was something that’s hard to put into words—how the state police put their hearts out on the floor and the Amish did the same,” said the father of one of the survivors. “It was good for both sides. It was comforting for the girls.”

The Amish had only words of praise for the police. “The police were magnificent,” said one Amish shop worker, who added, “I’ll wave at them the next time I see them.” It appeared that many Amish people in Lancaster County had made the same decision. Typically reticent in their interactions with outsiders, some Amish people began lifting their hands in greeting as they passed officers on the road. As members of “another kingdom,” the Amish had gained a new respect for the agents of the state, who had guarded their community and given them space to grieve after their own September 11.

Reporters continued to wonder if the shooting would bring changes in Amish schools, especially in the area of safety.The Amish wondered the same thing. On October 10, eight days after the shooting, Amish leaders held a meeting at an Amish home to discuss the safety questions that many people, both Amish and English, had been asking for a week. Should electronic alarms be installed? What about cell phones programmed to call 911?

The leaders decided that electronic forms of protection would probably not prevent future shootings and, according to one elder, could even weaken “our trust in God, losing His blessing on our schools.” Mechanical enhancements gained greater favor than electronic ones: installation of locks on schoolhouse doors, panic bars so people could exit but not enter, and sturdy fences with strong locks. Some proposed the use of evacuation drills and others suggested locating schools closer to Amish homes. But these suggestions were simply that: suggestions. In the end, each of the hundreds of small Amish school boards across the country would decide what safety changes, if any, they would implement. Each school board would draw the delicate line between trusting in God or in human devices.

By mid-November, a site had been selected for the new school, which would be built in early 2007. New grass sprouting on the old schoolyard was blending in with the adjoining pasture. The surviving girls were recovering; in fact, three were already back at school. Another, needing constant care, had returned home, and the fifth, still at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia, hoped to be home by Christmas. Indeed, she amused many in the Amish community when word got out that she had begged a nurse to wrap her in a big gift box as a present for her parents.

The Amish in Nickel Mines were moving on. Though the survivors carried deep scars, both physical and emotional, they were committed to moving on as a community, to caring for each other, and to practicing their faith. With God’s help, they were starting to live “a new normal.”