One Light Still Shines: My Life Beyond the Shadow of the Amish Schoolhouse Shooting (2 page)

My walk-on-water moment still shines crystal clear in my memory. I can see myself praying with boldness over my family and home as I’d never prayed before. Scripture verses, long treasured quietly in my heart, now poured out effortlessly. I knew in those moments that I was experiencing a truly supernatural infusion of boldness. Anyone who knew me would have correctly described me as timid and reserved — until that moment.

If self-confidence is a shout, then I had always been a whisper.

The transformation in me from my barely uttered, front-porch, heavenward plea for help to the audacious declarations of God’s presence and victory over my children, our lives, and our future, was so dramatic, so sudden, and so unlike my own style of spiritual expression that I knew God’s powerful presence had literally invaded my living room. It was an invasion I desperately needed if I was going to survive this other invasion, this descent of darkness that had just broken into my peaceful life.

I’d made the call that mattered most — I’d called on God Almighty himself.

The next call I made was to my mom. When you’ve been
blessed with loving parents, when you’ve known open arms and trustworthy hearts and selfless care since the day you were born, then reaching for that place of safety is as natural as breathing. I told Mom what little I knew, and she was on her way.

Mom came.
Such a simple sentence for such a powerful act, but it reveals volumes about the trust between parent and child I had always known. Mom and Dad had always been there for me. I didn’t wonder when I called
if
she would come. That was a given. In the same way, my call to God that morning had not been simply a hope or a wish tossed into the wind; it had been a daughter’s call to the heavenly Father. I’d known he would come, just as I’d known Mom and Dad would come, even if I didn’t know how he would show himself. But he’d come so fast, so dramatically, that my confidence in his power was now heightened.

Mom had been at work at a store in Quarryville, less than seven miles from my home, and she was by my side in a heartbeat. Together we listened to the whirring of helicopters overhead and the blaring siren of Bart Fire Hall, easily heard for miles around as it beckoned volunteer firefighters to the unnamed emergency. The scene at the fire hall when the siren sounded was one I’d seen many times from childhood on. At this very moment, Amish volunteers were arriving at the fire hall by foot-powered scooters, their fastest means of immediate transportation, while English volunteers were arriving by car and truck. Amish and English worked side by side here in Georgetown to help their neighbors in times of crisis. But as the siren blared on and on, my mother’s eyes and mine locked. How many emergency vehicles could possibly be needed? We shared the unspoken agony of knowing that some tragedy involving Charlie was unfolding, but we didn’t have a clue as to what that tragedy might be.

My grandpa, who lived next door with my grandma, stopped in. Grandpa had a police scanner in his kitchen. “There’s been a shooting of some kind near White Oak Road,” he told us. He had no inkling that Charlie was somehow involved — he was just explaining the emergency sirens and helicopters. Mom and I read each other’s eyes, silently agreeing to not yet burden my elderly grandparents with the anxiety we were suffering. We thanked him for the news, listened for a few moments as he speculated about what might be going on, and sighed with relief as he headed back across the yard to his own house.

“Mom, I can’t just sit here,” I said. “I’ve got to drive up there to see what I can find out.”

“No, Marie,” Mom said, “stay here in case the police call back. Besides, if Carson wakes up to all these sirens and you aren’t here, he’ll be scared. You stay. I’ll drive up toward White Oak Road and see if I can find someone who can tell me what’s happening.”

Mom left, and I missed her presence immediately. But somehow, in her absence, a holy presence made itself known. I was not alone. I checked on Carson who was still napping soundly, undisturbed by the sounds of helicopters and sirens, his sleeping face so peaceful. The world he would awake to would be drastically different from the one he’d known this morning. Would he still have a father? I shuddered at the thought.

Mom was soon back. “The roads are blocked and emergency vehicles are everywhere. No one can get through.” I could have turned on the radio and probably gotten at least some bits and pieces of information, but I didn’t. The burden of not knowing seemed easier to bear than whatever news I might hear over the air.

And then I saw them through the window — three cars pulling into my driveway. One was a police car, the other two unmarked,
but they were clearly together on an official visit. Part of me wanted to run to the door, fling it open, and know everything. But that part was overruled. I stood frozen in the living room, heard the car doors open and close, heard footsteps on the porch, yet still I did not move. Whatever news they carried with them, I knew I did not want it to invade our lives. But then the knock. I had no choice. The invasion was upon me.

I opened the door to somber faces.

“It’s Charlie, isn’t it?” I heard myself say.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He’s dead, isn’t he?”

“Yes, ma’am, he is.”

I held the door open and stepped aside, nodding for them to enter, an odd calm settling over me. A few detectives in suits and several uniformed officers entered my home while a few remained outside.

“This is my mom, Nadine Welk,” I said as Mom and I sat down side by side on the couch in the living room. Two of the men, detectives in suits, sat on the chairs facing us. They began by asking us questions but quickly concluded that Mom knew nothing about what had happened, and I knew nothing beyond the letter Charlie had left me and his cryptic call, both of which I’d already relayed to 911. How kind God was to send me compassionate detectives, because I still recall the gentleness and empathy of their voices, their eyes, as they began relating details no one would ever want to know. The specifics of death and destruction they recounted made my soul sick. It could not be true. And yet it was.

Charlie, one detective explained, had entered the one-room Amish schoolhouse at Nickel Mines, less than two miles from our home, that morning at about 10:25 a.m. He took ten girls hostage,
ages seven to twelve, and sent the boys home. He also allowed the schoolteacher and her sister, who was pregnant, to leave, then barricaded himself and the remaining girls inside, reinforcing the doorway and windows with lumber to cut off any hope of escape or rescue. I listened in stunned horror to the officer’s words, the images too unbearable to absorb. Charlie, my Charlie, the daddy who cuddled with Abigail and romped with Bryce and Carson, had ordered the girls to line up, then bound the feet of these precious little Amish girls and, one by one, shot them, execution-style. Then Charlie had turned a gun on himself. My husband was dead. At least three little girls were dead, while the others, all gravely wounded, were already in nearby hospitals, their conditions not yet known.

The officers in my home had just come from the schoolhouse. I did not want to believe that such a thing had even happened, much less that it had been done by my own husband, but the looks on the faces of these men left me no choice. They had witnessed the aftermath of the massacre, and now they carried those images within them. I could feel the weight of the burden they carried — the same weight that now pressed against my chest. The air was being sucked out of the room, replaced with a heaviness that seemed to slow time itself.

The terror and suffering endured by those innocent girls pierced my heart. It pierces me still. Sometimes the memory of it still causes an almost incapacitating weakness that overwhelms me. Inside that schoolhouse, something in Charlie spilled over in volcanic destruction, spewing a molten flow of immeasurable grief across the Amish community I knew, respected, and loved. These were our kind and gracious neighbors. We’d spent our lives surrounded by their farms, enjoying their produce. Charlie, my
dad, my grandpa, my great-grandfather — four generations of men in my family — had collected milk from these Amish farmers and carried it to local dairies. We knew their names, their faces, their waves and nods.

Normally, I neither listened to the news nor watched movies depicting violence and cruelty. I had guarded my heart from evil as best I could and had maintained a stance of purity for myself and for my children. It had always disturbed me to think that sin of great magnitude could exist within the hearts of humankind. But now the intimate knowledge of evil — something from which I had worked to insulate my sensitive spirit — was invading the most private area of my life. My own husband? The gentle man in whose arms I slept? This was unfathomable. Here I sat on our dark-green plaid couch in the living room — the very same couch where I’d sat surrounded by Charlie’s love — listening to the officer’s descriptions of horrific evil at Charlie’s hands.

I had never had what some might call a vision, yet I know that God alone gave me the images that came to me as I sat still amid the detective’s haunting words. In my mind I saw myself as a tulip petal falling away from the flower — still full of color but dying. As the petal fell, I saw the hand of God come and scoop it up — right before it hit the floor — and then he cradled me securely. God was here; he was with me. I didn’t know how it would happen, but I felt certain of his promise that he would help me through everything. I would be carried through my weakness and into his strength.

There wasn’t time for me to slip into the denial stage of grief or to try to rewind my life to a place of wholeness, untouched by this blackness. “I have just a few more questions for Marie, alone,” the detective said, so my mom stepped away, busying herself in the
kitchen. The questions went on and on, deeply personal questions about our marriage, Charlie’s state of mind, his childhood, his parenting, his schedule, his friendships, his interests and habits. My answers felt lame in light of this tragedy. Charlie was a quiet, hardworking man, a solid provider, a faithful and loving husband, a playful and loving father, a churchgoing Christian his entire life, a loving son and son-in-law.

I showed the detective the note Charlie had left, and we went over it word by word, trying to make sense of it, looking for hidden meaning, searching for clues that might somehow explain such a heinous act. The detective asked about Charlie’s reference to Elise, our premature daughter who had lived only twenty minutes, nine years before. I spoke of our grief and explained that Charlie had deeply mourned this loss but had kept it bottled up inside.

“Like many men,” I explained, “Charlie was not verbal about his feelings.”

But rage? No, I’d never witnessed it. Violence? Never. Aggression? In no way. Nothing revealed a man on the brink of mass murder.

“We walked our children to the bus stop together just this morning,” I explained, “like we often do. He hugged them goodbye, as usual. In every way, this was an ordinary day until I got his call.”

“Where are your children?” the detective asked.

“Abigail is seven. She’s at school. Bryce is five and at morning kindergarten. He’ll be stepping off the bus at the end of the driveway soon.”

“You’ll want to have a counselor present when you tell them about your husband.”

My stomach lurched, and a wave of panic flooded me. Mom had returned to my side; her presence calmed me. We needed to
make an immediate plan for Abigail and Bryce, to shield them from hearing about any of this from any source but me. We arranged for my aunt to meet Bryce at the bus and take him next door to my grandparents’ home. We didn’t want him to be frightened, seeing his home filled with police. Mom agreed to go to Abigail’s elementary school, get her out of class, and then take both children to my parents’ home until I could follow. She and Dad lived only two minutes away, just down the street from the Bart Fire Hall, still in the house we’d moved to when I was nine years old. For Bryce and Abigail, an afternoon playing at their grandparents’ home was nothing out of the ordinary and always fun, and at this point I wanted to do all I could to keep their lives normal for as long as possible. Mom would call two friends of hers who are counselors and have them at her house, ready when it came time to tell my children that their father was gone. I pushed that thought aside; it was too horrible to contemplate right now.

Then Mom called Dad, who was out driving his eighteen-wheel tanker on his milk route. The only way to reach him was to call his dispatch office and have them radio for him to call my house. Mom and I agreed that we didn’t want him to hear about Charlie’s acts over the radio. We wanted to be the ones to tell him. We knew it might take him up to an hour to arrive.

He called back in just a few minutes. Mom answered and told him that there was some kind of emergency involving Charlie. “Ken, don’t turn on the radio, don’t make any other stops,” she told him. “Just go park the truck and get to Marie’s as fast as you can.”

The time had come to call Charlie’s parents. It fell to me to share this news that no mother or father should ever have to hear. I’ll never forget their cries of shock and sorrow as their hearts were rent.

There is something very real about the sound a heart makes
as it’s torn apart. It’s not heard by the human ear but is felt by the body. Life and breath are forced out, and for a few moments you’re aware of reality but feel vacated from it, as if outward expressions of living have stopped.

As I hung up the phone, I was in that frozen state when, once again, God met me profoundly, bringing an indescribable strength I couldn’t have expected. While drawing me back to earthly reality, God awakened me to his provision. I felt his love pour over me, giving me mental clarity and the energy to move, to fight, to live. I would draw from this well continually over the hours, days, and weeks to come. It was a lifeline of peace to my heart.

I looked at my mom and saw her strength. She gave me confidence to walk through this because she wasn’t visibly shaken, distraught, or bewildered. She was calm. She had a plan, and she was acting upon it, modeling for me what God had planted in me before this news had come. Just as I had embraced God’s presence in the moments before Mom had arrived, now seeing her exhibit the same strength solidified the new boldness I felt inside.