On the recordDecember 17, 2012
as I was coming to work today, I drove past St. Peter's grade school which is on the House side of the Hill, and there was a group of students--little kids--who were being escorted by their teacher down the sidewalk. As they walked along I couldn't help but flash back to that image all America remembers from last Friday--the children at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown, CT, filing out, heading for safety at the firehouse. I don't know that I can look at the faces of these children as their names have been reported and not think of my own kids when they were that age, and especially of my own grandchildren now, who are just a little over a year old. But I saw in the eyes of those children what all of us see: innocence, happiness, an interest in the future, and the greatest dreams in the world. Well, in one brutal, depraved moment, those dreams ended when that gunman forced his way into Sandy Hook school and shot those poor innocent children. At that moment, some people stepped forward who really became heroes of the day: Four teachers, including Rachel Davino, Anne Marie Murphy, Lauren Rousseau, and Victoria Soto, and the school psychologist, Mary Sherlach, and Dawn Hochsprung, the beloved school principal who apparently walked right into the face of this gunman to try to stop him from harming any of the children in the school. These school employees lost their lives because they were trying to stop the gunman or shield their students from him.…
