Life
Obama offers ‘love, prayers of nation’ to Newtown
Inside the vigil children held stuffed teddy bears and dogs. The smallest kids sat on their parents’ laps.
There were tears and hugs, but also smiles and squeezed arms. Mixed with disbelief was a sense of a community reacquainting itself all at once. One man said it was less mournful, more familial. Some kids chatted easily with their friends. The adults embraced each other in support.
The president first met privately with families of the victims and with the emergency personnel who responded to the shootings. That meeting happened at Newtown High School, the site of Sunday night’s interfaith vigil, about a mile and a half from where the shootings took place.
“We’re halfway between grief and hope,” said Curt Brantl, whose fourth-grade daughter was in the library of the elementary school when the shootings occurred. She was not harmed.
Police and firefighters got hugs and standing ovations when they entered. So did Obama.
“We needed this,” said the Rev. Matt Crebbin, senior minister of the Newtown Congregational Church. “We need to be together here in this room. … We needed to be together to show that we are together and united.”
The shootings have restarted a debate in Washington about what politicians can to do help, gun control or otherwise. Obama on Friday called for leaders to agree on “meaningful action” to prevent killings.
