Childhood dreams and plans also died in Uvalde
Layla Salazar shows her first-place ribbons from field day at Robb Elementary School. Layla was one of the 19 children and their two teachers who were gunned down at the school in Uvalde, Texas. Credit: AP
They dreamed of becoming a teacher, or a lawyer, or a police officer, or even a marine biologist. They looked forward to a family trip to Disney World or a quinceañera still five years away.
The 19 fourth-graders who were shot and killed last week in their Texas classroom were athletes and dancers and singers and artists and scholars. Some were first-generation Americans, carrying the promise of America with them.
Several of them just that morning had received certificates for making the honor roll. Their parents, brimming with pride, photographed them clutching the piece of paper, smiling widely. Their two teachers, also shot and killed, were still educating them, even as the lure of summer approached.
Each had a family — parents, grandparents, perhaps a sibling or two — who are now experiencing a grief few of us can imagine.
But we've all lost something because of the tragedy in Uvalde. Each of those children had a story yet to be told. In their eyes, we see futures that will never be. In their smiles, we see dreams that won't come true.
All had the potential to choose their paths, to transform their worlds. Doctors or researchers who could've discovered the next key drug. Writers or artists who could've created the next great play or painting. The first female U.S. president. An astronaut heading to Mars.
Or, perhaps their impacts would have been simpler, but just as grand: teaching students not too different from them, rescuing animals, or building families with children of their own.
It's hard not to think about those 19 children as hundreds of other children around their age take the stage this week for the Scripps National Spelling Bee, nervously spelling the words they've studied, inspiring others to study and learn. It's not hard to imagine one of those children from Uvalde gracing that stage, or another like it, with their parents proudly looking on.
Instead, those parents are holding funerals, while the rest of us stare at snapshots in time showing those children sporting bright smiles, holding ribbons and trophies and birthday presents. There are no gruesome images of those children after their bodies were decimated by a military weapon, a horror that left some unrecognizable. Perhaps there should be. Perhaps only then would we really learn.
For now, we are left to imagine what could have been, to let their smiles tell their stories.
Amerie Jo Garza had just celebrated her 10th birthday. Someday, she might have been an art teacher. Instead, she spent her last moments apparently trying to save her friends, as she was shot while trying to dial 911.
Jose Flores Jr. loved baseball and his siblings, doted on his baby brother, and dreamed of being a police officer.
Alexandria "Lexi" Aniyah Rubio, even at age 10, emphasized the rights of women, and hoped to use the opportunities she had here to become a lawyer, her mother told The New York Times. "She wanted to make a difference. Please make sure she makes one now."
In all of the policy discussions, on everything from gun control to school security, it's easy to get lost in the politics, to look away from the 19 students and two teachers who died last week. It's easy to argue about laws and rights, without talking about Amerie, Jose and Lexi.
They could have done anything, been anything. Now, theirs are the faces we must see, perhaps the ones who finally just might make that difference.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
