A grim anniversary is upon us. This month marks 10 years since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The shooting, of course, took the lives of 20 students and six educators, but it also led to some introspection and changes in a nation where mass shootings are the norm. WSHU’s Davis Dunavin covered the shootings in 2012 and has just released an 11-part WSHU podcast called “Still Newtown.”
When you think about the anniversary of this event, what do you think about? Where were you and how did you first get close to the story?
Well, I was very new as a reporter. I had actually, I was working for a company called Patch, which at the time had a lot of small, local news outlets in towns across the country. I finished journalism school that spring. I had moved to Connecticut; I'm actually from Missouri, so I knew next to nothing about Connecticut. I had started as the editor of the Newtown Patch on November 30, 2012 - two weeks before the shooting. It was my first time really covering; it was one of my first news stories. It was an experience that I don't - it's kind of a blur in some ways now. I covered the town of Newtown for the next year, a little more than a year. You start working as a local editor, local reporter and you think about your obligation as a journalist and my obligation was to the people of Newtown and to the community in Newtown and I tried my best to think of that when national and global media outlets were reporting on the town. I tried to think about how my audience was not a national or global audience. So, for the next year I tried to really as much as I could think about what would the town, the people in this town like to read? What kind of news do they need? How can I give that to them? As a new reporter, it wasn't always - it was the furthest thing from easy. But as I got to know people, I really fell in love with the town. I will still say Newtown is one of my favorite places I've ever been. It's a wonderful place and I still spend a lot of time there.
Did you have any trepidation about revisiting sources, people who were involved or affected in some way? And I ask that question, because it's a very difficult thing to think about and to talk about. For a lot of people, there's a lot of trauma associated with going back there.
That's true and you have to remember, the name of the podcast is Still Newtown and the meaning behind that is Newtown is still here and it's been here for 10 years. So, I wouldn't even say I was going back. In a sense I did. I've spent more time in Newtown in the past year, certainly, then I had for several years. But I've been going back and we've been building relationships with a lot of wonderful people who appear in the in the podcast and I think one of the strengths of this project and obviously there was trepidation. But one of the things that reassured me was some of these folks I've gotten to know over the years, and I followed the work that they're doing. So, I wasn't, you know, I certainly spoke to a lot of people I never met before, but some of the people I talked to, they weren't strangers. I interviewed them before and I'd gotten to know them. I think that the mutual respect there made it made it a better podcast.
How are people doing?
Sorry for laughing at that. I'm laughing at that because there's a point in the podcast when I say, one of the questions that everybody in Newtown gets asked is, “How are you doing?” And I try not to ask that question myself that much. I try not to ask that question because it's an easy question to ask but it's a really hard question to answer because no two people are doing the same way. I talked to one person, Jenny Hubbard, who is the mother of Catherine Violet Hubbard, who died on December 14th, that died at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Jenny started an Animal Sanctuary in Catherine's name and Jenny's story is sad and beautiful. I mean, she shares with us in one of the episodes, her story of kind of coming back to her faith and in a really difficult time, finding some kind of peace and she uses the word healing. She says, “You know, I think we have to heal.” She uses the example of, I don't remember if it's her or if it's somebody else that we spoke with. Somebody uses the example of, dancing with a limp. You know, you may have an injury, but you have to relearn how to dance. Now, I say that, to point out that Jenny's story is Jenny's. It's not everyone's. 26 families lost someone. Hundreds of people were directly affected and thousands in the town. Everybody's story is different. So, when Jenny, for example, says you know, you have to heal, I remember that she's speaking for herself. There are other people who have different stories and I think that's why you can't say, how's everyone doing? You can say, how is one person doing? And from there, you have to ask that question a lot, in a way.
In what ways have Newtown and the Sandy Hook community changed since 2012, when you look at it today?
What's interesting, you know, when I started this project, I originally thought this was going to be a story about how Newtown reimagined itself and that was a word that we thought about. Is this a town that reimagined itself? And so, I started talking to some people, and I said, “Well, how have you changed? How have you changed over the past 10 years?” What I quickly realized was that the story was the way that the town had held together. Now, Newtown has changed in some ways. A lot of it, really, you find is the ways that any small town, and I shouldn't say small, I mean, Newtown is on the smaller side, I suppose, but it's one of the biggest by area towns in Connecticut. So, people might argue over whether it's a small town, but in terms of change, Newtown has changed in a lot of the ways that a lot of towns in America have changed. You know, there's there have been demographic changes, there's been real estate changes and one of the more, I think, unexpected parts of the story is speaking with a new couple who had just moved to Newtown and they're thinking about, you know, asking the question, knowing that Newtown, for people outside of town is often associated, is usually associated with the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting and deciding, we like it here and when they got there, they found a place that was a place of joy. I think a lot of people are surprised to hear that joy is something that could be so present in a town like Newtown, but it's true and time and time again in the podcast, you'll hear people talking about finding joy or rekindling joy. For me, it's obviously a difficult story that obviously contains sadness, but it can come to joy that it can end at, I hope, with a with a note of hopefulness and optimism and wisdom that comes from experience. I think that's the change. It's not a simple change, but it's a growth over 10 years.
It occurs to me that perhaps unlike other high profile, mass shooting events, the Sandy Hook example, stayed in the news in a way that many of the others sadly have not over a period of 10 years. There was obviously a long-drawn-out legal case and then the Alex Jones sideshow and the defamation case, and lawsuits against him, which are still being hashed out. How has that process that's played out so publicly changed the way people have grieved or grappled with what they went through a decade ago?
Well, I mean, I think undeniably...we don't speak much on the podcast to the Alex Jones side show, but we've definitely covered it a lot. I've covered it a lot. I think it's undeniable that it has exacerbated some grieving. I think it's worth remembering that while Newtown was in some ways, the coverage of Sandy Hook was in many ways, as you said, drawn out. There have been so many shooting incidents over the past 10 years, that I've unfortunately spoken to people, we spoke to a few young people, young survivors, who got involved in anti-gun violence advocacy, who talk about the fatigue of going through this again, and again, seeing it in other communities. I think for young people, especially, that is a really valuable perspective for us all to remember. The students who were in Sandy Hook Elementary School, are in high school or college now. We talked to two students who, we actually talked to them just a day or two after they got into college. They've lived their lives with this. Obviously, we've seen students from other tragedies over the years, Parkland, I think, is one of the more notable ones. Some of the students from that go on to be very powerful voices. I think especially for the young people, it's important to remember that this is something that is going to touch every single aspect of their lives and they're very brave and very strong for dealing with it in the way that they do so vocally and so openly.
Lastly, is there something that the wider world you mentioned earlier, having the local editors view on the story from the very beginning, and obviously, it was an international story. Is there something that's misunderstood about what happened or the effect of the shootings on the community there that you wish people better understood?
Well, I think that was the impetus for the podcast, really. In a lot of ways, I think Newtown and I'm sure this is true if you went to Uvalde or Sutherland Springs or other smaller communities that have experienced these things. It's important to remember that Newtown is a town that's been there for a long time and it's going to be here for a long time. It has its own stories and it's not as several people told me, it's not defined by one day. Newtown doesn't want to be defined by one day. For example, Newtown is the place where the game of Scrabble was trademarked, or at least was developed. It's had a long history. It's a town with its own stories, its own little quirky characteristics and beautiful little places and I think that's what I'd like people to remember. That's true of many places, obviously. Newtown is a place that should not be reduced to one day. Nowhere deserves to be reduced to one day, but with so much good in Newtown, both before and after, and so much great work that's been done by the people most closely affected by this. It's really important to remember the broader story and the more complicated and not so easy to sum up narrative of a town of nearly 30,000 people, each of whom have their own stories to tell.
