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A year ago today. This will remain at the top until tomorrow. Scroll down for updates.

The Amish focus on life.

NICKEL MINES, Pa. (AP) - Whoops from a children’s baseball game and the singing of hymns rang in the air on the eve of the first anniversary of one of the Amish community’s worst moments.

In keeping with Amish custom, no public observances were planned for Tuesday’s anniversary, although local Amish families held a private gathering on Monday to mark the occasion.

West Nickel Mines Amish School, the scene of a gunman’s massacre that left five girls dead and five others wounded one year ago, has long since been razed and replaced with overgrown pasture, in part to prevent it from being treated as some sort of shrine or becoming a morbid tourist attraction.

The Amish invited state police troopers and some neighbors to join them in prayer, singing of hymns, a meal of barbecued chicken and a sunny afternoon of watching a ball game.

“I think they still have some hurt,” said Bart Township Fire Department Chief Curt Woerth II. “We could say some prayers for the children and their families this week, because it’s going to bring back some memories.”

Officials from Virginia Tech were also invited to attend. Four months after the massacre at that school, members of the Amish community traveled to Blacksburg, Va., to pass along a comfort quilt.

Woerth said he would spend time on Tuesday at the fire hall that served as a community nerve center for weeks after the attack. The Amish were expected to pass the day quietly with their families, and the wider community also scheduled no public event for the anniversary.

A year ago, milk truck driver Charlie Roberts, 32, the son of a police officer and father of three young children, suddenly commandeered the one-room schoolhouse in Pennsylvania Dutch farm country.

Roberts, who had no criminal or mental-illness history, apparently was tormented by the death of his infant daughter in 1997 and by a memory of having molested two female relatives about 20 years earlier — a memory that investigators have never been able to substantiate.

The ordeal in the schoolhouse lasted about 40 minutes from when Roberts entered the building at 10:25 a.m. until he shot the girls in rapid succession at 11:05 a.m. Two and a half minutes after the shots rang out, state police were able to breach his makeshift barricades and enter the school just as he committed suicide.

On Monday, Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller attended the Amish gathering and said there was nowhere he would rather have been. “I wanted to share with them that they’re never far from our hearts,” Miller said.

Four of the five wounded girls were able to return to classes by December, but the fifth is confined to a wheelchair and is fed by a tube. One of the girls had surgery recently to repair damage to her arm and shoulder, while another has vision problems because of her gunshot wound.

Amid cheers and laughter on Monday, some children played a marathon baseball game on a ball diamond constructed next to their new one-room schoolhouse, the New Hope Amish School, while others raced scooters along the driveway and waved to passers-by.

There were no classes on Monday and the school was expected to remain closed Tuesday.

From the Lancaster paper last year (no longer available online):

GEORGETOWN, Pa. (AP) - Horse-drawn buggies glided past roadblocks Thursday morning as Amish families gathered to bury four of the five young girls who were gunned down inside their tiny rural schoolhouse.

All roads leading into the village of Nickel Mines, where a milk truck driver had taken the children hostage and killed them, were blocked off for the funerals.

Their Amish families asked for privacy as scores of mourners prayed at the girls’ homes before taking the bodies to a hilltop cemetery and burying Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Marian Fisher, 13; and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7.

[ . . . ]

In Lancaster County, there have been prayer services for the Amish school shooting victims at area churches, but the traditional funerals for the girls were closed. About 300 to 500 people were expected at each, said funeral director Philip W. Furman.

Amish custom calls for simple wooden caskets, narrow at the head and feet and wider in the middle. An Amish girl is typically laid to rest in a white dress, a cape, and a white prayer-covering on her head, Furman said.

The girls’ families, Amish neighbors and friends are coping with the slayings by looking inward, relying on themselves and their faith, just as they have for centuries, to get them through what one Amish bishop called “our 9/11.”

“They know their children are going to heaven. They know their children are innocent … and they know that they will join them in death,” said Gertrude Huntington, a Michigan researcher who has written a book about children in Amish society.

“The hurt is very great,” Huntington said. “But they don’t balance the hurt with hate.”

In just about any other community, a deadly school shooting would have brought demands from civic leaders for tighter gun laws and better security, and the victims’ loved ones would have lashed out at the gunman’s family or threatened to sue.

But that’s not the Amish way.

In the aftermath of Monday’s violence, the Amish have reached out to the family of the gunman, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, who committed suicide during the attack in a one-room schoolhouse.

Dwight Lefever, a Roberts family spokesman, said an Amish neighbor comforted the Roberts family hours after the shooting and extended forgiveness to them. Among Roberts’ survivors are his wife and three children.

“I hope they stay around here and they’ll have a lot of friends and a lot of support,” said Daniel Esh, a 57-year-old Amish artist and woodworker whose three grandnephews were inside the school during the attack.

Roberts’ relatives may even receive money from a fund established to help victims and their families, said Kevin King, executive director of Mennonite Disaster services, an agency managing the donations.

The Lancaster paper coverage of the funeral:

A Solemn Farewell
First Amish girl’s funeral begins two-day process of burying five schoolhouse murder victims in same cemetery. Naomi Ebersol is recalled as a shy child who didn’t want to go to school that day.

By Jack Brubaker
Lancaster New Era

Published: Oct 05, 2006 12:29 PM EST

LANCASTER COUNTY, PA - Now, the funerals. On this cool, clear October morning, Lancaster County’s Old Order Amish community laid to rest the first of five girls killed in Monday’s massacre at West Nickel Mines Parochial School.

By horse-drawn carriage and on foot, somber men and women garbed in black traveled through protective police barriers on White Oak and Mine roads.

They headed for the home of Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7, the only daughter of Amos and Katie Ann Fisher Ebersol.

The two-story house with yellow siding, not visible from any road, stands amid mature oak trees at the end of a winding lane. It’s about a quarter of a mile from the one-room schoolhouse on White Oak where Naomi died.

Hundreds of Amish from Bart Township and far beyond streamed into the home all day Tuesday and long into the night Wednesday.

They paid their respects to the family, viewed Naomi’s body, prepared food and cleaned house.

Carpenters constructed a framework over the front porch and covered it with plastic in case of rain. Wagons conveyed sturdy mourners’ benches to the site.

Food processed by many hands filled the kitchen. The benches filled the porch and all the first-floor rooms but one. That room had been cleared of furniture except for one small bench.

On that bench in that bare room lay Naomi’s body in a plain pine coffin with its hinged lid open.

A pretty little girl in a white dress, with a white prayer cap covering her dark brown hair, Naomi showed no signs of her morning of suffering three days ago.

Naomi’s funeral followed ancient tradition. Several Old Order ministers delivered lengthy sermons in German, providing biblical instruction and admonition.

The mourners’ attention no doubt periodically strayed to the catastrophic events that had propelled them to this house today.

On Monday morning, Carl Roberts, a 32-year-old milk truck driver and father of three who lived a mile away, armed himself and entered the school. He ordered everyone but 10 girls to leave.

He barricaded the doors, shot the girls in the back of the head, then killed himself.

Five of the girls have died. The rest remain in critical or serious condition.

As ministers urged mourners to submit to the will of God and prepare for life after death, some congregants no doubt thought specifically of the girl in the coffin.

Naomi Ebersol was at times a nervous little girl. She was not always comfortable in the second grade at the West Nickel Mines school and sometimes grew anxious during her morning walk there,

At those times she would consider turning back through the woods to the safety of her home.

But the eldest of her five brothers, Marcus and Ervin, comforted her and encouraged her, and so she would continue, walking out of the woods and along a lane through a meadow to the school.

Early Monday morning, as the sister and brothers made their way through the meadow, Naomi began to cry. She said she wanted to go home.

But the moment of anxiety passed and the three went on.

Much later in the morning, when Roberts burst into the school, brandishing weapons and oozing anger, Naomi was severely frightened. She fell crying to the floor.

One of the older women lay down beside her to comfort her.

But then Roberts ordered all the older women, including the teacher and her aides, to leave the building. He told the boys to go as well, and so Marcus and Ervin had to abandon their little sister.

When state police troopers broke into the building, they discovered 13-year-old Marian Fisher and Roberts dead and the other nine girls lying in pools of blood on the floor.

A trooper picked up Naomi and carefully carried her out the door onto the front lawn.

There the little girl who didn’t want to go to school died in his arms.

Twelve-year-old Anna Mae Stoltzfus died on the way to the hospital.

Eight-year-old Mary Liz Miller and her 7-year-old sister, Lena, died in hospitals hours later.

Funerals for these girls were planned for this afternoon and Friday.

All these funerals, but not the sites, would be similar. The Ebersols’ house is unique.

Well over a century ago, this was the “mansion house” of Charles “Cappy’’ Doble, superintendent of the old Gap Nickel Mines, from which this area took its name.

A dozen years ago, the Ebersols went to housekeeping here. All their children were born in this house. Now Amos runs a woodshop in the barn and Katie cares for the home and Naomi’s five brothers.

At the end of this morning’s solemn funeral in the old mansion house, the congregation prayed and a minister pronounced a benediction.

Then the mourners abandoned the hard benches, returned to their dark carriages and fell in line behind a horse-drawn open wagon bearing Naomi’s coffin.

With horses reined to a plodding pace, the procession turned south on Mine Road and headed toward Georgetown. There the mourners filed past the Bart Township Fire Co., where many of the men serve as volunteers.

And then they turned down Quarry Road to Bart Amish Cemetery.

As they halted their buggies around the burial ground, many no doubt remembered another time of sadness, in mid-December three years ago, when they buried 20-year-old Henry Miller here.

Miller, also of Nickel Mines, was the eldest of five Amish friends killed when their Jeep collided with a snowplow. At the time, the Amish viewed the tragedy as one of the worst ever to befall their community.

Now they have another benchmark.

The mourners filed past scores of small, plain headstones reading Miller and Ebersol and Fisher and Stoltzfus and gathered around a freshly dug grave at the rear of the cemetery.

There, during a brief, simple ceremony, the extended Ebersol family and many friends lowered the coffin of little Naomi into the earth.

And there, as funerals continued, would the other families bury their daughters.

Autumn will pass and winter come, and in the spring the Amish farmers in adjacent fields will plow and plant again.

And from the Penn-Patriot:

QUIET FAREWELL
Faith brings ‘peace and comfort’ to families burying slain girls
Friday, October 06, 2006
BY JOHN LUCIEW
Of The Patriot-News

The whisper of wind through brittle cornstalks. The clip-clop of horse hooves. The low thunder of wooden buggy wheels rolling on blacktop.

Those basic, simple sounds marked solemn services yesterday as the Amish of Bart Twp., Lancaster County, laid to rest four of the five girls killed in Monday’s schoolhouse shooting.

Three funeral processions of 30 to 50 buggies each rolled along a two-mile route through the village of Georgetown for Naomi Rose Ebersole, 7; Marian Fisher, 13; and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7.

The fifth victim, Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12, is to be buried today in similar fashion.

The processions started from the family homes, where services were held, and ended in a small, Amish cemetery in a field at the edge of town.

“It’s a very difficult day,” said Rita Rhoads, a Mennonite midwife who delivered two of the deceased girls. “There’s a lot of sadness and grief. But among all the grief, there is a peace and comfort because the families believe their daughters are in heaven.”

Lean horses trotted at a brisk pace as the black-clad mourners rode to the Georgetown Amish Cemetery on Quarry Road. The Amish displayed no emotion, save for the occasional woman clutching a tissue.

Likewise, they paid little attention to the international media, which lined a block-long section of the street.

As many as 50 law enforcement officials, including more than 25 state police troopers, were on hand to close off streets around the village, keeping most onlookers away. A state police plane and helicopter patrolled the skies.

“Our mission here is just to respect the Amish and their wishes,” said Trooper Linette Quinn, a state police spokeswoman. “They are very private people who are not used to this kind of attention. We respect what they’re going through.”

Services for the four girls were staggered throughout the day so members of the tight-knit community could attend more than one. The first, for Naomi, started at 9 a.m., and the last, for the Miller sisters, concluded well after 5 p.m. at the cemetery.

The in-home funerals were said to have had 100 to 150 people each, all personally invited by the families and seated on benches inside the homes.

A couple who attended the funerals of Naomi and Marian said there were two ministers at each service, which is customary. The ministers recounted the biblical story about the earth’s creation in seven days, said the 48-year-old husband, who provided only his first initial and last name, A. King.

He quoted one of the ministers as saying, “The person that died isn’t here anymore. We have to think of the people who are still living.”

State troopers who responded to the shootings were present at one of the burials, the couple said. “That was really touching for us,” A. King said.

The homes of at least two of the families are along Mine Road, yards away from the West Nickel Mines Amish School, where the girls attended classes and died at the hand of Charles Carl Roberts IV.

“The homes are very close together,” said Duane Hagelgans, Lancaster County’s public information officer.

On Monday morning, Roberts, a local milk truck driver, barricaded himself inside the one-room school with apparent designs to molest the girls. He began shooting instead when state police surrounded the school.

Roberts shot 10 girls, five fatally, before shooting himself to death.

The injured were taken to hospitals, including Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, in critical condition. The hospitals have announced they are no longer releasing condition updates.

One of the girls in the Hershey hospital was in grave condition last night. Lancaster County Coroner Gary Kirchner said he was contacted by a physician at the hospital who said doctors expected to take one girl off life support.

Roberts’ autopsy, performed Tuesday, confirmed that he died of a single gunshot wound, Kirchner said.

Each of the funeral processions went by the Roberts home, on the main route through Georgetown. Relatives said Roberts’ wife, Marie, was out of town yesterday.

Marie Roberts’ aunt, Jaquie Hess, said her niece turned down an invitation to attend Marian’s funeral because she needed to tend to her three children.

“She’s trying to take care of her kids right now,” said Hess, who joined onlookers on the street to view the processions. “They are very distraught.”

Hess said Roberts plans to meet with the victims’ families but said members of her family still can’t believe all the tragedy was at the hands of the “Charlie” they knew.

“I still don’t believe in my heart that he wanted to hurt those girls,” Hess said.

Each procession was led by mounted state police troopers, followed by a horse-drawn hearse. Mourners’ buggies were carefully ordered according to family rank, with numbers scrawled in chalk marking the sides of each vehicle.

The girls’ graves were hand-dug in the small cemetery, marked by unassuming gravestones and surrounded by a white fence. The coffins were lowered and buried with mourners looking on.

“The Amish don’t show emotion too much,” said Vera Rohrer of Cochranville, Chester County, who attended several Amish funerals. “They start covering the graves right away.”

The Rev. Douglas Hileman of the Middle Octorara Presbyterian Church in Quarryville, held a daylong open service for members of the public who wished to pray or pay their respects.

Hileman said the Amish people’s fierce faith and tremendous capacity for forgiveness hold lessons for us all.

“It’s so unheard of in many parts of the world,” he said. “We get to see it in action firsthand.”

Staff writers Daniel Victor and Chris A. Courogen and The Associated Press contributed to this report. JOHN LUCIEW: 255-8171 or jluciew@patriot-news.com

Also commemorating are Sniper One and PA Pundits.

rightwingprof :: Oct.02.2007 :: Odds 'n Ends :: 4 Comments »