Sobering

The quiet reality set in. Life will never be the same for an entire community. Every backfiring car, motorcycle, or fire cracker will bring back memories of a day when a human being walked into the school and shot other human beings. It isn’t a matter of student on student crime or adult on student crime. It is a matter that human beings choose to do these things.  

Standing in a crowd of 1,000 or so souls, I was next to a Catholic, Muslim, Jew, and agnostic. It didn’t matter on this day what you believed in, we are all a community standing shoulder to shoulder to show a family that we were behind them. We support you. We honor the sacrifice that you have made. 

As the hearse rolled by in its quiet refrain to finality, the sobering reality set in. A mother and father are burying their kid today. It was one act of violence that has started several rings of waves in the community pond of Chardon.

I didn’t know Daniel Parmertor, Russel King Jr, or Demitrius Hewlin, but then again I don’t need to. They could have been neighbors, husbands, or parents with my kids one day. Instead they are a footnote in history as the three kids who were shot at Chardon High School.