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The massacre in Newtown, Ct.

Between the flagpole in the center of town and the northwest side of Sandy Hook, there were 28 deaths, including 20 young elementary school children killed by a lone gunman, who was a former student at the school.

This quiet community known locally over the years as the home of a state hospital for the mentally insane.-Fairfield State Hospital (also known as Fairfield Hills State Hospital or Fairfield Hills) was a psychiatric hospital in Newtown, Ct., which operated from 1931 until 1995.

At its peak, the hospital housed over 4,000 patients. The entire facility was owned and operated by the State of Connecticut Department of Mental Health.

Coincidentally, the shooter was thought to have mental issues before he grabbed his mother’s guns, killed her in her bedroom and drove from their home in Newtown to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he busted through the front door with guns blazing, striking the principal and five other adult teachers.

Then he took aim at 20 children at ages five and six. He shot each one numerous times. Two adults were wounded and hospitalized.

This is an acknowledgement of death, loss for each family and a community today in grief 13 days later.

My friend Ian McMahon offered an exclusive first-person account from Newtown in last week’s issue.

While we may never know what caused the shooter to erupt and in a vengence kill these people, there is some trauma associated with divorced parents and perhaps being odd, he was bullied at the elementary school as a child. We have not heard from his father or brother about their knowledge of the shooter.

Yet, the town mourns for its loss and what could have been for the adults and the future of the children.

Sunday Editor Brian Koonz of the Danbury News-Times did a story last week titled “Newton healing from the inside out,” a compelling read on the tragedy.

Mr. Koonz, as a sports reporter for the News-Times, did a story on my mother, Dorothy P. Jordan, when she it a hole-in-one back on July 19, 1998. It wasn’t until May 2011 that I met him at the second service for my mother at the Candlewood Lake Club in Brookfield, Ct., where he spoke about “Dot” and how the interview proceeded. Twelve years passed and Mr. Koonz recalled the interview which not only acknowledged my mother, but put the club on the front page of the sports section.

I have visited Newtown many times. I have friends there.

My parents had a house on Candlewood Lake in New Milford, which is located on a man-made lake owned and operated by the Connecticut Light and Power Company.

Thus, when I visited, I would go to Newtown to eat at restaurants and visit friends, one of whom is Ian McMahon, who has a 12-year-old son, Brendan.

The community is home to people who work in the area and others who commute to ether New York City or Hartford, Ct.

Route 25 runs between Brookfield and Newtown, whose icon is the hugh flagpole in the town’s center which greets drivers. Today, the base contains a collection of remembrances from signs to teddy bears.

No one would suspect a mass killing in Newtown – residents, elected officials, police (state and local) or visitors.

It is part of Fairfield County, in part known for its wealth but also is history as a farming community made up of 80 square miles.

Here in Berkshire County our thoughts and prayers are with those who suffered loss and the community-at-large.

Our goals should not be about making each school a bastion, but, where possible, open and welcoming to parents, friends and the community-at-large.

A community can’t arm the faculty/staff. Education is about freedom to learn and seek the truth and rely on educational tools to bring forth the facts to be absorbed in a normal, unrestricted area.

We can seek more residential facilities where the warehousing of an individual is above $150,000 each here in Lenox compared to the warehouse of a prisoner at $30,000-$35,000 annually.

We, as a nation in mourning, should outlaw assault weapons ASAP with President Obama in the lead. This is not a political issue, this is an issue for the protection of our children and our friends.

I grew up in an era that outlawed machine guns. Yet, my grandfather, Levi T. Patterson, had hunting rifles in his house.

No need to worry about an expanded government, Mr. Patterson was a state legislator, deputy sheriff and property owner in Freeport, Maine.

He and Leon Leonwood Bean (L.L. Bean) weren’t concerned about self-protection. They were focused on their next hunting venture into the deep woods of Maine.

We can demand for our respective communities across America, that we be protected from the number of assault weapons and can seek a means to fully understand the psyche of the mentally ill to further protect society.

In reality, our goal should be to be able to live in a civil society, but the truth from these many scenes have left America wondering what are these young minds searching for.

Is it the notoriety, the classic doomsday that I am going to take my life and thus I am going to bring others along or the simple explanation I don’t give a damn and thus I need to cause a shoot-out and leave the world in despair which has been the shooters’s situation for most of his/her life?

Investigators will search for the truth; the Newtown community will eventually heal but not forget that massacre that left the  community broken and wondering aloud: how did this happen here?

Now the question: Who is going to shoulder the blame?

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Posted by on December 27, 2012. Filed under Opinion,View from the Tower. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
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