It is not a tragic retelling of the day a troubled young man blasted his way into an elementary school and tore the heart of a small town to pieces.
It is a story of how teenagers are finding joy in Friday night football again, how one Sandy Hook teacher was able to her apartment alone again, how one mother is finding joy again and how beautiful young voices are making music again.
This is a story of a community that has chosen love.
Rather, they are mothers and fathers who suddenly had the most precious pieces of their lives violently ripped away, but still found something left inside themselves to give.
There is Scarlett Lewis, who lost 6-year-old Jesse. She is spreading her message of love through a new book, through her artwork, through a nationwide speaking tour on kindness and through her donations of quilts to an orphanage in Cameroon.
There is her surviving son, T.J., who collected money to send a Rwandan orphan to college.
There are the parents of beautiful Ana Grace, who did not live to see her seventh birthday. Nelba Marquez-Greene, a marriage and family counselor, is bringing a message of peace to legislative bodies and school safety conferences across the country. Her husband, saxophonist and music professor Jimmy Greene, is spreading a similar message through music.
There are the parents of smiley, energetic Avielle Richman, she, too, dead at 6. Mother Jennifer Hensel and father Jeremy Richman, both scientists, started a foundation to study connections between biological characteristics and the propensity for violence.
There is Guy Bacon, only XX when his sister Charlotte was killed. In the weeks after the shooting, Guy felt safest around Kona, one of dozens of therapy dogs brought from around the country to Newtown schools. Now he is training a therapy dog of his own that he can bring some fur-clad comfort to others suffering after tragedy. (ALSO THE ACTS OF KINDNESS.)
There are Francine and David Wheeler, who helped found Ben’s Lighthouse, a non-profit working create enough joyful memories for their deceased son’s schoolmates that the Dec. 14 school shooting won’t become their singularly defining moment of childhood.
"You have to figure out a way out a way you’re going to get up in the morning. This gives us hope that not everything is lost," Mrs. Wheeler said. "We’re saying let’s make our lives a mission of finding something we can do so somebody else doesn’t have to go through what we’re going through."
Ben Wheeler was sure he wanted to be a lighthouse keeper, but that vision abruptly changed one day when he decided he rather be an architect. He died before he could do either leaving his parents, his older brother and a church congregation heartbroken and wanting to help his dreams live on even if little Ben could not.
In the days after the shooting, Rich Haylon, a Trinity Episcopal Church leader, conceived of a way to honor Ben, who had been a member of the congregation. He would get other church members to volunteer and he would call it Ben’s Lighthouse, a name that makes the Wheelers smile.
"When you think about it, lighthouses show us the light and keep us from harm," said Mrs. Wheeler, 46, who often dreams about her son and sometimes feels like he is guiding the nonprofit’s work and helping to build it up like an architect would.
That’s what organizers thought about as they constructed a 20-foot model lighthouse that would become the centerpiece for June festival filled with lighthouse-themed games, artwork, crafts and entertainment for the town’s children.
"We want surviving children to have positive things to do. They’re going to need support for years and years and years," said Mrs. Wheeler, who is a private voice and piano teacher.
Mr. Haylon saw the lighthouse festival – six months and a day after the shooting – as a turning point in the town’s healing.
"Before the festival, my overriding mood was dark.There was a cloud hanging over all of us. I think the festival was a seminal point when things started to change," he said.
Ben Wheeler was sure he wanted to be a lighthouse keeper, but that vision abruptly changed one day when he decided he rather be an architect. He died before he could do either leaving his parents, his older brother and a church congregation heartbroken and wanting to help his dreams live on even if little Ben could not.
In the days after the shooting, Rich Haylon, a Trinity Episcopal Church leader, conceived of a way to honor Ben, who had been a member of the congregation. He would get other church members to volunteer and he would call it Ben’s Lighthouse, a name that makes the Wheelers smile.
"When you think about it, lighthouses show us the light and keep us from harm," said Mrs. Wheeler, 46, who often dreams about her son and sometimes feels like he is guiding the nonprofit’s work and helping to build it up like an architect would.
That’s what organizers thought about as they constructed a 20-foot model lighthouse that would become the centerpiece for June festival filled with lighthouse-themed games, artwork, crafts and entertainment for the town’s children.
"We want surviving children to have positive things to do. They’re going to need support for years and years and years," said Mrs. Wheeler, who is a private voice and piano teacher.
Mr. Haylon saw the lighthouse festival – six months and a day after the shooting – as a turning point in the town’s healing.
"Before the festival, my overriding mood was dark. There was a cloud hanging over all of us. I think the festival was a seminal point when things started to change," he said.