UVALDE

The Robb Elementary School shooting occurred in May 2022 in Uvalde, TX. Nineteen young students were killed along with two faculty members, and 17 students were injured but survived. About 90% of the school’s students were Hispanic, and about 80% came from poor backgrounds.

We weren’t planning on stopping in Uvalde as we drove from Houston to Laredo on the US/Mexico border. This small town was still in the middle of a painful process of grieving, the emotions were still raw, and we didn’t want to get in the way. But its location made it a good place to stop during our long drive. Because we were stopping there anyway, I decided to find out about the El Progresso Memorial Public Library.

I was surprised to find that the library had become one of the centers of healing for the grief-stricken community. “Thousands of unsolicited gifts have been flooding into the Uvalde library including children’s books, care packages and money to support programs.” This was from a recent article in The Times of India pointing out the critical role the library continues to play in Uvalde. It also highlights the world-wide interest and outpouring of help for the people of Uvalde. But, unfortunately, the on-going tragedy of gun violence in America today continues.

When I wrote library director Mendell Morgan I received a warm invitation to visit the library. That was when we decided it would be appropriate to visit this place of grief and healing. Rather than emphasize the unspeakable death of Uvalde’s children, our intention was to record how a heroic library could be a positive force in a community desperately in need of finding a way through a very dark time.

We spent the afternoon with Assistant Director Tammy Sinclair as she showed us the library and the collection of gifts sent to Uvalde from around the world. She was hired to help catalog and archive this phenomenal flood of support for this broken place.

As we entered the building, we saw signs for many kinds of personal counseling and healing throughout the library. Tammy spoke movingly during the several hours we were together. She had been an elementary school teacher before becoming a librarian and knew several of the children and teachers that were in the shooting.

All three of us were on the edge of tears throughout the guided tour of the heartbreaking and remarkable gifts of compassion flooding into the library. I was surprised at the great care and detailed work many people put into these memorials to the lost children and teachers of Uvalde. One person spent months putting together a large quilt with the names, ages, and photographs of the 19 people killed.

Another woman named Penny spent a year making intricate needlepoint butterflies that were magnets for each of individual victims. A mother whose daughter was in a different school shooting send a box of handmade Stars of Hope. One particularly powerful gift was a blanket sent by trans-sexual person who had grown up in Uvalde. They had a rough childhood here and eventually had to leave but the blanket was sent to comfort someone who lived through this tragedy.

Another moving gift was a stack of 19 boxes, each containing a wooden cut-out painted figure of each victim. This made each of the lost children and teachers seem very real. All three of us struggled very hard not to be overcome with grief at that moment.

Thousands of personal notes were included with the gifts. One of the victim’s tricycles was included in the archive and seeing it hit another emotional cord that made me gulp.

Many religious objects were sent including many displays of crosses.

Under a large blanket we discovered a huge painting of the victims made by prisoners in a penitentiary. Like many of the objects here it will eventually be put up on display in the library.

The library’s task was to preserve, catalog, and store the thousands of objects sent and to treat them with the dignity and respect that they deserve.

Besides being the repository of this vast and tragic archive, the library was one of the centers of healing for a traumatized community. Signs were everywhere offering counseling and help to all that needed it. A special room had been set up for private therapy. Everyone was welcome and no one was turned away.

The El Progresso Memorial Library has been a much-loved public institution in Uvalde for over 100 years. The beautiful and spacious space inside reflects the respect the community has for this place.

Outside was a moving memorial made of rocks under a tall tree called the Uvalde Memorial Kindness Rock Garden. Everyone is encouraged to take and share one of the painted rocks. I took one that had the word “Hope” painted on it and I am sharing it to the readers of this blog. Hope is one of the things that might help us through these troubled times.

Speaking of troubled times, as we have been driving across country, we have been riveted by the disaster unfolding in Israel and Palestine.  The trauma and scarring that took place in the town of Uvalde is being multiplied many times in this new conflict. One can only pray that things there will not get worse. Let’s hope.