The North Georgia community grew a lot closer on Wednesday as people pulled together to pray and support the Apalachee High School shooting victims and their families.
The community is rallying around the ‘Appalachee Strong’ slogan, and people are pitching in wherever they can to help a community in mourning.
United in grief
“It is really difficult. But the community is coming together,” says Joyce Loughran, a retired elementary school teacher from Winder. “Over and over again, I hear students say how their teacher was standing guard and assured them.”
T-shirts that say “Apalachee Strong. Love Will Prevail ” are being made. Blue and gold ribbons display the unity on mailboxes throughout neighborhoods.
The assisted living home across from the school provided bathrooms and snacks for those waiting hours to find their children. “The line of parked cars was unbelievable. Parents walked a mile or more to get to the football field,” according to Loughran.
She says a local wrecker service in town is bringing students’ cars home to alleviate stress.
“I was an acquaintance of the Resource Officers who stopped the shooter. Tanner Good and Brandon King,” she adds.
Loughran speaks about prayer vigils and praises Barrow County Sheriff Jud Smith, a lifelong resident.
She says, “He is fully invested in helping the community move through this tragedy,” expressing her gratitude for him. That will be harder for some than for others.
We are not okay
As the community searches for ways to move forward, others are compelled to look back.
Ivonne Rivera and her husband both graduated from Apalachee High School. Her son, Elijah, now attends school there. A sophomore, he was in class when he heard screams, and the shooter reload, then an ominous knock on his classroom door.
Rivera retells her son’s fear in a raw, moving post on Facebook.
“He asked me yesterday if anything close to this happened when I was attending apalachee and I said no!” the grieving mother and alum writes. “I couldn’t wrap my head around it all. Being an alumni and seeing my first baby going where Derek and I went to school was exciting for us. Now it’s tainted. Our children are gonna need extra care because this is not normal.”
Rivera describes her own time at Apalachee as “happy.” She now refers to the same halls she once walked with her friends as “halls of horror.”
“The same safe space of my classroom is now the dark and quiet room where only gunshots and screams were heard,” she writes. “The fact that my son heard the shots outside his room, heard this child drop his mag to reload, heard the knock on his classroom room door, the fact that he himself didn’t know what to text me, the one who gave him life and he didn’t know what he would send to me could be his last text I would see…. Makes me angry and sad cause I want to take this away. I want to take the memory away and feelings and the horror.”
Rivera concludes by saying, “This is not okay, and I’m mad! I’m mad this is now the conversation we are having! I’m mad that there are teachers and kids who didn’t get to go home yesterday. I’m mad that our children have to forever live with this for the rest of their lives!”
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