Nashville Four Days Later

When evil things happen, some of us get angry and scream at the tops of our lungs. Others pray silently. Some just want to work for change. In my mind, we need all three.

Words by Anne Byrn

Honky-tonk Nashville has gone quiet. Events are canceled, and our schools are under tight security. I’ve learned from someone who lived near a previous mass shooting that in the aftermath of such an event, schools receive threats of violence.

If you drive past Covenant School today, you will see a growing memorial of teddy bears, flowers, signs, and balloons, as well as security vehicles blocking the two entrances. It is an open campus set on tranquil grounds, just the well-manicured setting that young parents might consider when selecting a school for their child.

Now, parents in Nashville, in private schools and public, look with more scrutiny when they drop their children off in the morning. This is the chilling new normal here.

My children are grown, but my granddaughter is just beginning preschool in Florida. I had spent the week with her and was driving home and approaching Atlanta when the school shooting news broke. By Cartersville, more details emerged. By Chattanooga, I realized I wasn’t going to bake a cake for the readers of my Substack newsletter when I arrived home that day.

I’m still not able to turn on an oven as my heart feels too heavy, but that’s precisely what Nashville has always done after the death of loved ones. When my father suffered a stroke in 1994, family friend Margaret Milam arrived with a tub of homemade pimento cheese and a bowl of what she called “bereavement corn,’’ creamed corn popular for times of grief because it’s silky and comforting. And when my father died in 2000, a warm lemon cake arrived at my doorstep. With uncanny speed and instinct, my high school friend Cathy Shell had popped that Bundt cake in the oven and delivered it to me as word had only begun to spread of his death.

I’ll bet lemon cakes, chess pies, chicken casseroles, and bright Jell-O salads are lining the kitchen counters of the victims’ families right now. I’ll put money on the fact that someone has brought a Honey Baked Ham, too, and picked up supermarket fried chicken. Food nourishes our souls, and it gives us the strength to carry on. 

Nashville will never forget the victims of this horrendous shooting on the morning of March 27, 2023. It is etched in memory. Today, our nation’s flags fly at half-staff to mourn the lives lost: Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, William Kinney, Cynthia Peak, Mike Hill, and Katherine Koonce. A GoFundMe account for Hill, the school’s custodian, has far surpassed its goal of $25,000 to help with funeral expenses and the family’s eight children. It stands at more than half a million dollars as of this writing, and more than 10,000 people have donated. 

One of those three student victims, Evelyn Dieckhaus, age 9, is said to have pulled the school fire alarm to warn everyone of the shooter in the building. She leaves an older sister and two grieving parents. Head of the school Katherine Koonce was shot down in a hallway decorated with student artwork, leading us to believe she may have tried to confront the assailant and save lives. She was a career educator and mentor for countless families and students. And the two police officers who ran toward gunfire are being hailed as heroes after body camera footage released Wednesday showed them moving quickly to stop the shooter.

Yet even if America’s legislative system may be broken, our people aren’t. In four days, I have learned many of my newsletter readers are compassionate mothers, fathers, and grandparents who care not only about their children but everyone else’s. Some people I have spoken with come from families where gun violence has killed a loved one, and the Nashville shooting has been a painful reminder. In America, 131 have died as a result of mass shootings this year alone. Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens today, overtaking automobile deaths, and proposals to reinstate bans on assault weapons and require universal background checks have lacked votes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.  

As a longtime resident of Tennessee, I am frustrated not only about the state’s gun laws but the ways in which our political leaders have reacted to gun violence. Though U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn said on Twitter her “heart was broken over the unspeakable evil,” she has amassed $1.3 million in National Rifle Association (NRA) contributions and voted against the “Bipartisan Safer Communities Act” last June. State Senator Kerry Roberts of Springfield attributes gun violence to TV, movies, and video games. And U.S. Congressman Andy Ogles, who represents the district in which the Covenant School is located, sent a family Christmas card in 2021 in which he, his wife, and two of his three kids are posing with guns. 

When evil things happen, some of us get angry and scream at the tops of our lungs. Others pray silently. Some just want to work for change. In my mind, we need all three. As of this writing, thousands of Nashville students and parents had descended on the state Capitol, and word on the street is that their ruckus has led state Republican legislators to consider red flag laws, emergency protection orders that restrict access to guns for individuals at elevated risk to harm themselves or others. It’s not the final answer, but it’s a start.

Call it wishful thinking, but I would like us all at the table together, passing the yeast rolls and platters of fried chicken, and planning a better America where school shootings are not normal and no parent ever has to think otherwise.