Op Ed - We Are Better Than This One Year After Sandy Hook

We Are Better Than This One Year After Sandy Hook

Maureen Rossi

In 1999, I was a cub reporter and scored by first big interview with a Congresswoman for a Manhattan-based parenting magazine.    At the time I was the mother of a seven-year old girl and a five-year old boy, like every parent around the nation, I was horrified by the Columbine massacre as it spewed forth from each broadcast network on April 20, 1999.  The coverage was endless; it quantified our shock as a nation while simultaneously feeding what was to become the nation’s burgeoning thirst for the horrific.  As I entered the Nassau County office of United States Congresswoman Carolyn McCarthy for my seminal interview, the first thing I saw was a photo of her late husband on her desk.   Dennis McCarthy was one of nine people killed on December 7^th in 1993 in the Long Island Railroad Massacre.  McCarthy’s son Dennis was one of the six people injured that day, his photo and a photo of his then new-born son also sat on her desk.

McCarthy was a nurse and tendered to her son as he spent well over a year in recovery, learning to walk and talk and perform day to day duties.  His mother told me that during his recovery he and one of his nurses fell in love and married; she beamed as she showed off the photo of her first grandson.  The devastating act of one madman shattered the lives of so many families twenty years ago, although distraught by the loss of her husband and by almost losing her only child; McCarthy rallied and put together a campaign.  She ran and won a seat in the United States House of Representatives in 1996.   It was during the interview about guns in America and solutions to gun violence that McCarthy invited me to join her and other mothers to march on Congress on Mother’s Day in 2000.  We would be marching with the Million Mom Mom March, a grass-roots movement to demand sensible gun laws.   When I knelt at my children’s beds for evening prayers a week before the protest, I asked each of them if it was okay that I would be gone for Mother’s Day and I explained where I was hoping to go.  My daughter said ‘mommy you must go to Washington, you are a writer and you must find out why children are killing each other and let all the people know’.   Growing up as the daughter of New York Times newsman and being in the news business, I, nor my children were ever shielded from the realities of our world, we watched and discussed the news all the time. 

I rose at 5:00 a.m. on May 14, 2000 and headed to Great Neck to board a bus.  It was arranged someone (by the journalism gods or perhaps the Congresswoman) that I was to be on a bus full of families who lost a loved one due to gun violence.  For several hours I sat with each and every single person at that bus and listened to their stories.  Two beautiful dark-haired teenage girls from Nassau lost their father when his jewelry store was robbed.  Their mother sobbed uncontrollably as they told me the story, they said they were sad that their beloved father would never be able to walk them down the isle when they got married.   There was a Howard Beach mother who lost her only child on Mother’s Day the year before.  He was shot down by his best friend from kindergarten, both body-builders, the friend was taking steroids and went into a rage and shot and killed her son.  When I informed the mothers on the bus that it was the one year anniversary of Linda’s son’s death, one by one they rose and went to her and embraced her.  There wasn’t a dry eye on that bus, even the broadcast news team on the bus succumbed to the poetic sadness.  There was a woman from Douglaston whose son was one of several people shot and killed by a schizophrenic neighbor’s three day siege and there a dozen more families on that bus whose lives were shattered because of gun violence.  To this day I feel so blessed to have met these people and to have gained their trust and to have chronicled their stories.  It was a long ride to Washington, we cried together, we hugged, shared snacks and stories of our lives – we also decided to stick together during the day – we were a team.   Marching together through the streets of Washington, I kept looking back to make sure our group was together.  When we turned one corner we stopped in complete awe, there before us was the United States Capitol, a behemoth building whose mere sight demands reverence.  The lawn in front of the Capitol was littered with mothers, not the forty-thousand expected but over seven-hundred thousand mothers from around this great nation.  They were chanting and singing, they held signs demanding change and far too many held large photos of their dead children.  Many of us were jubilant, there was feeling that if American mother’s banned together, we could accomplish anything.  We came to Washington to say enough – enough of our children have died because of guns – we said, We Are Better Than This, America is better than this!   I wept with mothers from Columbine, I hugged black mothers from the South side of Chicago, I wept with suburban soccer moms, Hispanic mothers from the Barrio and mothers whose babies were shot down by well-known gangs like the Bloods, Crips and Ms-13 in drive-bys in the toughest neighborhoods in our country. 

Marching with the Million Mom March was one of the most powerful experiences of my life.  I have spent the last thirteen years writing about gun violence and interviewing local families of gun violence for many publications.   I have shot guns, I have held a stolen Tech 9 semi-automatic from the projects and I have allowed my son to shoot guns at our family’s country home.  I have also cried a million tears for all the mothers who have lost their precious children to gun violence since Columbine.  I cried for the mother’s of Virginia Tech, Aurora Colorado and I was inconsolable when the horror of Sandy Hook came across my Kings Park television.   I wish this story had a happy ending, I wish the mothers of America had kept the momentum that we had after Columbine; I wish we had stayed united.  But we went back to the many tasks that beckoned; we went back to raising our children, taking care of our elderly relatives and neighbors and volunteering in our communities.   I have no answers to the national dilemma of gun violence but I know we will be judged for generations to come for what we did not do to protect our precious children.   I know that America is a great nation and I know We Are Better Than This.