Ten years after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, the pain is still just as raw for the families of the victims. Yet even as that community relives its darkest day, people are lifting each other up and remaining deeply connected.
On a day of remembrance, recollections of life take flight.
“Ten years ago this morning, I walked Catherine to the bus stop,” Jenny Hubbard, mother of Catherine Violet Hubbard, who was six years old when she died, said.
Although she has been gone for ten years, her mom still smiles at one memory from that tragic morning.
Get Connecticut local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC Connecticut newsletters.
“She had a new pair of boots,” Hubbard said. “They were filled with fleece and they had little bells on them. And she jingled all the way to the bus stop.”
A little girl, looking ahead.
“She was so excited that Christmas was 11 days away,” Hubbard said.
Local
To honor her daughter, Hubbard chose to embrace joy on this solemn milestone.
“It’s a day of hope,” she said.
There was a groundbreaking ceremony on permanent structures that will be built at the Catherine Violet Hubbard Sanctuary in Newtown. The sanctuary has already rescued 700 animals, carrying out Catherine’s message of spreading kindness.
“Giddy, giddy!” Hubbard said about how her daughter would feel about the sanctuary. “If Catherine were still gracing this earth, she most certainly would be the first to be here and the last to leave. It is a place that really is her spirit and her love.”
A vision blossoming. Meanwhile, colorful pedals celebrate life at the new permanent Sandy Hook Memorial. On Wednesday morning, families of the victims shared a private moment at the site, placing bouquets for each victim in the memorial’s fountain.
Teddy bears are tokens of love for those children who lost their lives, and for those at the memorial grieving.
“Do you guys need a hug?” Terri Averack, of Cheshire, asked a group, handing them stuffed animals of Winnie the Pooh and Tigger.
A retired school psychologist, Averack says the tragedy hits close to home, offering comfort in an embrace.
“I thought I should bring my collection of cuddlies, and everybody can get a hug from them or from me, or both,” she said.
Lifting each other up is engrained in the people who live in the area.
“I do go to the firehouse and I buy my Christmas tree every year from the Sandy Hook Fire Department since that day,” Easton Police Captain Jon Arnold said.
Arnold saw an outpouring of support in the mere hours after the school shooting, when Easton Police stepped in to relieve the exhausted Newtown officers on security patrol.
“We would have people pull up in their cars, open the hatch, and they would have a full spread of hot food. And they would ask you what you want, and you'd get whatever you wanted. And ten minutes later, another car would pull up with the same thing,” he said. “I had an elderly man who just goes out for his walk every day, walk by me and say I'll be back, come back with a cup of coffee.”
The pain of responding to that horrific day is not dulled by the years.
“Somebody had messaged me on Facebook or I had read emails from people, checking on text messages, and then it started to flood back. And so as those things happened, it became more and more emotional,” Arnold said.
Friends and neighbors are forever changed.
“Nobody will go back and be the same,” Arnold said. “As a police officer, now I'm constantly looking around to see who's around me and what they're doing and what their intentions are. Whereas maybe I didn't necessarily do that as intently before."
“After Sandy Hook, it changed the whole way you looked at things, the way you looked at law enforcement, the way you looked at community, the way you looked at schools," he continued.
Arnold says through so much sadness, there has been a positive aspect: school security has been scrutinized and there is now an extremely strong relationship between local police and educators.
“I would say the thing that came out of it was a community,” Arnold said.
Through the years, in this corner of Connecticut, one thing is consistent.
Resiliency: in something as simple as a hug, or colorful tributes to life.
“It is it is a day that shows me that life continues,” Hubbard said. “It has to it has to continue, because so much beauty is in store.”
