acting

lalala

JENN: How many of you have been out to Newtown? If you haven’t seen it, it’s this big huge flagpole with a massive American flag high above the town. Right next to it is Edmond Town Hall.

Edmond Town Hall is the only two dollar movie theater in the entire state The town offices used to be there, as you might have guessed but we had to move them to Fairfield Hills Just too much bureaucracy to contain within a 1930s building I guess

Carole runs the town of Newtown

Oh please stop My god Ill lose my job

She does. My mom runs it.

No she doesnt

It’s a bronze bell that was cast at a foundry I worked at, and they gave it to me as a gift when I left, ya know?

And you can hear it all over the neighbor hood and all the kids ran and that was it it was time for dinner And if I rang the bell twice

We have probably - I marched through the Labor Day parade as a kid - It was fantastic.

Main Street is kind of the site for this very much out of hand holiday Halloween tradition You really have bought the farm if you live on Main Street I mean if you bought a house on Main Street you gotta know what youre in for is all Im saying There are so many people that the candy is donated to the people in these houses to parse out to the thousands of kids that come Yeah it is frightening I kid you not It is frightening and not because its Halloween

So I got my husband on the phone and said - “Bring back both of them.”

They start combing through the woods or something and they dragged some guy out and he was like

I didn’t do anything, I didn’t do anything.”

Everyone was like Oh they caught one of the gunmen in the woods and they put him in a car

No! I didn’t do anything!

And it was just a neighbor

So then her husband comes and then he leaves - Almost all the kids had been matched up with their parents.

The governor was there Pat was there and we had accounted for the children All the children We had to account for 600 children So everybody was involved in this decision which was we were waiting for ya know for the police to do their thing and um Coroners were coming in and um the EMTs were there And um they knew you know what this was going to be And the governor took it upon himself he said “I cant I had to make the decision” And he went into the back room of the firehouse and well let them know They weren’t coming out

People were falling on the floor, crying, tearing their hair out - you know, utterances of the spirit. Our different houses of worship there delivering it up.

The safety of this little town its like when Kennedy died that peace overall has been shattered I think thats the biggest thing that happened here the shattering of the illusion of our little world How did this happen to us And the magnitude of every flag in the nation at half-staff for Newtown What What just happened here

I just got swarmed. I mean, I was literally swarmed. - I mean there were literally hundreds and hundreds there in just the first few hours.

Horrible Invasive It was like a There was no escape and there was no time for us to grieve We would all be watching everybody and when somebody went down I mean at the grocery store people would would go down to their knees and there was a hive of people that would be there to just let them cry You know And you cant you cant do that with the media because its so intrusive They just want man they want you sobbing They want to see you in pain We had to actually put up signs on the doors of town hall that said No Press

I’ll be happy to talk about this. - My brother is schizophrenic and there was a good five years -

Ten years

Ten years that was grey. - I have no idea what my brother is gonna do.

The thing is and maybe its not appropriate but twenty eight people died that day it wasnt twenty six it was twenty eight people who lost their lives Twenty eight families that mourned

Adam was a gifted child that we failed - We’re mammals, we flock together. We need to be together.”

One of the things that really struck during all this was when I heard that Adams body wasnt being claimed That was a weeks worth of staying up at night

People here are afraid. You know? - I don’t know if I’ll ever recover. How could you possibly… How do you process all of this?

This this is what happened to us because so much happened that we werent allowed a moment to really grieve for these babies But I remember the morning the flags went back back up because I had heard about it and I drove in I was getting there at some at some crazy hour in the morning I called David on the phone my guy who helps me with the building and I said Get over here and get the flag up I want the big flag up in the center of town Raise those flags get em back up where theyre supposed to be And then we just watched David raised the flags back up and I thought Okay alright were getting our town back Now all you people leave

Well I wanna tell you something, doing the mail is tough.

I know it is.

Doing the mail is though - Just block yourself and do it.

I know but it was such a healing for so many people

With their face!

It was this big

And the arms go out too… It’s just… It’s the cutest.

And we hung them up on the wall and anytime anybody was starting to get well really down doing the mail wed say Go get a hug

People needed to do it for themselves, - So we didn’t really need 63,700 teddy bears.

Everybodys on edge everybodys looking everybodys watching everybodys scared and its not us its its the world which is what weve been trying to get across to people who call that wanna send another 60000 teddy bears You need to look at your own children Theyre scared they need counseling they need teddy bears Do it there Were were We got em We got the teddy bears Trust me Give em to your children in honor of ours

The ripples, the vibrations… This stuff spreads.

Then we had Yolie

I’ve been hearing about Yolie, for what, six months now? Five months now anyway. She keeps saying, “What kind of name is Yolie?”

We were well now I hope Im telling the right story we were obviously very in it We were in the hallways of town hall and we had decided that uh we were going to display everything that came in So we get the tables out into the halllway and get the tablecloths out and such and put it all in the mail bins Then theres this skinny little rump kid and shes out in the hallway and shes going up and down and shes going through all the cards and shes sort of settled in and I didnt know who she was She had a camera and shes taking pictures Hi What are you doing

I’m just taking pictures.

What do you mean youre just taking pictures Youve been taking pictures of hundreds of thousands of cards So the next day I went out there and there she was the cards are now fanned out and shes getting creeping into new territory shes out there and shes making a mess on my table What are you doing

Well, I’m not doing anything, I just wanted to kinda get…

Then I went back the next day and the cards are on the floor and theyre spread out all over the place Okay were going to have to have a talk here What is it you want to do

My mission is to have an online collection - “No Words, love Trey,“ a mother of two in Texas, and you’re like, “Oh yeah, that’s it.”

I think shes nuts for doing this but shes doing this

She turned from being just someone who walked in there and she’s now -

Now shes got the keys to the kingdom She can do whatever she wants to

My love for this town - I was the biggest royal pain in the neck that you could ever think of.

Mmmhmm.

And finally, the realtor and my wife turn around and they stop the car in the middle of the road and they said, “Which one?”

Pick it!

And I said, “Okay. The white one with the fence.”

Fine The white one with the fence Were just moving up Were going to help our families and continue our counseling Take care of the cops and the EMTs and the dispatchers and the high school kids and you know hope we can heal and that it wont hurt so much Newtown has to move on So lets move on