Today marks 10 years since 20 children and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. Two journalists who covered that tragedy for WHSU, a public radio station in Connecticut, are now reporters here at GBH News. Mark Herz and Craig LeMoult joined All Things Considered guest host Judie Yuill to reflect. The following transcript has been lightly edited.
Judie Yuill: Craig, you were there that morning. What was it like?
Craig LeMoult: Well, we got word that there had been some kind of shooting. And when I got there, there were just tons of emergency vehicles of all kinds and parents’ cars. There was just gridlock, and people were abandoning their cars and running to the school to collect their children. And I started speaking to kids as they were leaving the school. Here's what one of the children that I spoke with said when he described leaving the school.
[Sandy Hook Elementary student: Everybody was freaking out. So everybody came, and now everything is fine. And I'm pretty sure the guy who came in with a gun is handcuffed.
LeMoult: Did anybody tell you what happened?
Student: We think some people might have gotten injured. So we just hope they're OK if they did get injured.]
LeMoult: Of course, you know, we found out later that day what had really happened.
Yuill: Mark, you were hosting All Things Considered when the first alerts went out. What do you remember?
Mark Herz: Yeah, well, like Craig, I mean, it was this sense of hoping for the best, fearing the worst — but still not really having any idea how bad the worst could be, I would say, Judie.
And I had managed to get on the line with a parent who was saying, “I think my kid's OK — I've been in touch with him — but we're waiting to hear about my kid's friend.” And that kid's friend was one of the kids that didn't make it. And that was the kind of stuff later that just broke your heart, you know?
"It was this sense of hoping for the best, fearing the worst — but still not really having any idea how bad the worst could be."Mark Herz, recalling the immediate aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting
Yuill: What was it like reporting there in the days immediately following the shooting?
LeMoult: Sandy Hook was crazy. I mean, it was just overwhelmed with media from all over the world. And I think that was really tough for a lot of the community members there. Also, there were a lot of just people who came to the town to share something, to express something, to bring a gift of some kind to the community. And that was kind of overwhelming, I think, for a lot of people there.
One other thing that was a little bit more positive were the therapy dogs that I saw who came in. There was just a team of golden retrievers who were brought to the schools. And I interviewed the people who had the therapy dogs, who brought them there. And, you know, they told me about a child from the elementary school who was petting one of those therapy dogs and started talking to the dog. And the parents started to cry because they said it was the first time that she'd spoken since the incident had happened three days before.
Yuill: Mark, that first anniversary, what was that like?
Herz: I think for the people in town, it was such a feeling of wanting healing. There were three clergy leaders in town that sort of came together in this group, and I talked to them. There was a Protestant clergy, the monsignor at the Catholic Church and this rabbi. They just kind of had to hold each other up — as well as their congregations. I just want to share a cut of tape from Monsignor Weiss.
[Monsignor Robert Weiss: We have embraced the light. You know, we embraced it very quickly after this tragedy. Sometimes it's a flicker, sometimes it's a waning with the wind. But it's still burning and it's still burning in the hearts of people because we are moving forward. You know, we are healing the best we can with God's grace and God's blessings.]
Yuill: Craig, in the years following the shooting, you spoke with many family members who had lost their loved ones.
LeMoult: Yeah, I did. I made a connection with someone from an organization called Sandy Hook Promise, which many of the families became involved with and said to them, "If people want to talk, please have them come to us." You know, and that's basically what started happening.
The first person I spoke with was Bill Sherlock, and that was just two months after the shooting. He just wanted to share the story of his wife, Mary Sherlock's life. She was a school psychologist. The week the story aired was actually her birthday.
[Bill Sherlock: It's another one of my firsts, you know? First Christmas, first New Year's, first birthday, first Valentine's Day. It's tough because my daughters aren't here, and I worry about them. It's tough on them.]
LeMoult: A lot of the family members that I interviewed wanted to speak because they’d become devoted to various causes after what happened. When I actually got here to GBH, I interviewed Michelle Gay. Her family was in the process of moving to Massachusetts when the shooting happened, and she had been a teacher. And after the shooting, her focus became school security.
[Michelle Gay: And I just thought, you know, after all of these traumas and tragedies and experiences that we have here, we are really not that much better off than we were in the days of Columbine [in 1999]. And I was very struck by that and this sort of message of, you know, we have to do better.]
LeMoult: She founded the nonprofit Safe and Sound Schools, which is focused on protecting schools from this kind of thing.
I also interviewed jazz musician Jimmy Greene. His daughter Ana was one of the victims, and I spoke with him in 2014. He just had this album come out, this incredible album called Beautiful Life, which, of course, was devoted to his daughter. The first song on that album is an arrangement of the hymn “Come, Thou Almighty King,” which was in a piano book that his son Isaiah had been learning.
[Jimmy Greene: And in the book, they included the lyrics as well. My daughter, who always loved to be around my son when he was practicing, she would be around the piano and she sung the lyrics while he was playing.
Archival sound plays of a child singing to “Come, Thou Almighty King”]
LeMoult: It's just this incredible album. It actually also includes a children's choir that's made up of kids who are classmates of Ana and her older brother when they had lived in Canada before they moved to Newtown. And the last words on that album the kids sing over and over again is "remember me." And Jimmy Greene told me he wanted what happened there to be remembered so that we would do something about it.
Yuill: Mark, what happened after that? I mean, Sandy Hook put gun control front and center in a unique way. But for those hoping for change a decade later, the wait goes on.
Herz: Yeah, Judy. I think somebody who exemplifies that so deeply is Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy. He was a young congressman whose district included Sandy Hook. He took his oath of office just weeks after that, where he moved from the House and became a senator. And his first speech on the Senate floor was trying to enact federal gun control. And here's Chris Murphy on the Senate floor just earlier this year after the Uvalde shooting in Texas.
[Sen. Chris Murphy: Why do you spend all this time running for the United States Senate, getting this job, putting yourself in a position of authority if your answer is that: as this slaughter increases, as our kids run for their lives, we do nothing?]
Herz: Earlier this year, President Biden did sign some legislation, so Chris Murphy has had some success after a decade. That legislation didn't control guns themselves, but it does address trying to keep guns out of the hands of certain people who might be disturbed or dangerous.
LeMoult: And I think for the families of the victims at Sandy Hook and for the whole community, this is a tough moment 10 years out. And I think people do want what happened there to be remembered, like Jimmy Greene said, so that more can happen to address these issues.
