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TO THE EDITOR:
Growing up in Pipestone, I was blessed with an idyllic childhood nestled in the heart of small-town America. Today, I’m fortunate to be raising four children of my own—ranging in age from 2 to 9—in a similarly close-knit neighborhood in southwest Minneapolis.
My son Max is 4 years old. He’s bright and funny. He loves attention and trucks (the bigger, the better) and my sweet, beautiful boy was at Annunciation Catholic Church during the recent school shooting.
Our little corner of Minneapolis is like a small town inside a big city where boulevard trees are now wrapped in Annunciation school colors. We’ve been members of the parish since moving here 12 years ago—it’s not unlike my hometown church, St. Leo. On summer evenings, neighborhood kids band together and leapfrog from yard to yard while parents gather for impromptu front yard bonfires. I run into people I know at the local grocery store and greet them at church – seeing their distraught faces on national news is surreal. Please believe me when I say: if a school shooting can happen in my neighborhood, it can happen anywhere, and it will happen again.
As parents, we are forever tethered to our children by an indescribable love—one that reshapes our hopes, our fears, and our very sense of self. We carry them in our hearts always, quietly wishing the world will be gentle, safe, and kind. As news of the shooting broke, so did my heart. I didn’t know if my little boy—who I had dropped off not an hour earlier—was okay. Was he alive? Was he hurt? Was he scared? The anguish and helplessness I felt in those moments has forever changed me.
I was in my 6th grade math class when the announcement came that there had been a school shooting at Columbine. At the time, I remember thinking that Littleton, Colorado was so far away—that something like that could never, and would never, come to my doorstep. I was tragically wrong.
In the decades since, it infuriates me that those in power have done so little in the way of common-sense gun reform. And at what cost?
•Of a preschool class asked to hide in a playhouse as gunshots loud enough to shake the ceiling erupted overhead?
•Of praying schoolchildren watching their friends and siblings get shot?
•Of brave teachers, tasked with protecting children as if they were their very own, left broken and wailing upon hearing the name of a student killed?
•Of parents, sending their kids off for the first week of school with knots in their stomachs, hoping beyond hope that it won’t happen here?
I implore you – be the voice of change. Make choices that leave this a better, safer world for our children.
Elyse Froehling, nee Cooper
Minneapolis