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Mourning the Amish Tragedy

October 4, 2006

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Grieving in Silence

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Milk Truck-DriverExecuted Children in Pennsylvania Amish Schoolhouse

Charles Carl Roberts IV, a 32-year-old milk-truck driver carrying three guns and a childhood grudge, stormed into a

one-room Amish schoolhouse on Monday, sent the boys and adults outside, barricaded the doors with two-by-fours

and then opened fire on a dozen girls. Roberts killed some of the girls and critically injured others, before turning a

gun upon himself and committing suicide. The latest reports state that six of the girls have died and the death toll

might rise. Most of the children were shot execution-style at point-blank range after being lined up along the

chalkboard inside the schoolhouse, their feet bound with wire and plastic ties. The shooting occurred around 10:45

a.m. on Monday in Nickel Mines, which is located in the heart of Pennsylvania Amish country.

On the evening of the shooting, Amish neighbors from the Nickel Mines community gathered to talk about their

feelings of grief with each other and mental health counselors. According to reports by counselors who attended the

grief session, the Amish family members grappled with a number of questions: Do we send our kids to school

tomorrow? What if they want to sleep in our beds tonight, is that okay? But one question they asked might surprise

outsiders. What, they wondered, can we do to help the family of the shooter? Plans were already underway for a

horse-and-buggy caravan to visit Charles Carl Roberts family with offers of food and condolences. The Amish

dont automatically translate their grieving into revenge. Rather, they believe in redemption.

The Funeral Services

Funeral services for many of the children are being held on Thursday. In the aftermath of Mondays violence, the

Amish are looking inward, relying on themselves and their faith, just as they have for centuries. They hold

themselves apart from the modern world, and have as little to do with civil authorities as possible. Amish mourners

have been going from home to home for two days to attend viewings for the five victims, all little girls laid out in

white dresses made by their families. Such viewings occur almost immediately after the bodies arrive at the parents

homes.

Typically, they are so crowded, if you start crying, youve got to figure out whose shoulder to cry on, said a

Mennonite midwife who delivered two of the five girls slain in the attack. At some Amish viewings, upwards of

1,000 to 1,500 people might visit a familys home to pay respects. Such visits are important, given the lack of e-mail

and phone communication.

Update: In Thursdays Amish funeral ceremonies, made even more touching and heartbreaking by centuries-old

simplicity, four of the little girls were buried as the Amish of Pennsylvania turned the other cheek. With television

and newspaper cameras kept at a distance, and police helicopters enforcing a no-fly zone overhead, one of the few

non-Amish guests invited to the funeral of seven-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersole, the first little girl to be buried, was

Marie Roberts, the killers wife.

With tears in her eyes, Mrs. Roberts sat in the back of one of the 34 black horse-drawn carriages that were part of the

funeral cortege behind Naomis horse-drawn hearse. On the way from the church to the hilltop cemetary, the

procession passed Mrs Roberts home where her husband, Charles, loaded up his guns before heading for the little

village school on Monday.

On Saturday, Amish mourners joined family and friends for the funeral of the Pennsylvania truck driver who killed

five Amish girls before taking his own life. Charles Carl Roberts IV was laid to rest in the graveyard of the

Georgetown United Methodist Church, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The cemetery is not far from the school

where the shootings took place and the Amish graveyard where his victims are buried. The Amish who came to the

burial gave condolences to Roberts wife and three children.

Also on Saturday, local Amish leaders met to discuss the future of the West Nickel Mines School. Mike Hart, one of

two non-Amish members of a board set up to handle donations following the killings, said the plan is to build a new

school in a different location.

As part of their traditional manner during times of crisis, the deeply-religious villagers of Nickel Mines,

Pennsylvania, turned inwards for support yesterday with prayers before, during and after each of the three

ceremonies. As a Quaker, I have an empathic sense for the devout, private and quiet commitment to

passivism and peace shared by members of The Old Order Amish. My kindest thoughts are with the Amish

people as they embark upon the mutually reciprocal journey of healing themselves.

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