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QuickTake:
A community came together to process a horrifying school shooting as its residents mourned — and reached out to each other. The grief extended to Eugene, Springfield and throughout the nation.
BEND — Next to an entrance of Silver Rail Elementary — where flowers, balloons and stuffed animals lay — a cellist sat on a folding chair and picked up his bow.
“This is a melody,” said David Chinburg, a longtime Eugene musician who now lives in Bend. “About not being able to see through to the end of your days, your one true love.”
The instrument’s deep, warm tones carried over a small crowd, and parents pulled their children tighter in their arms.
Chalk rasped against the sidewalk, Friday, Oct. 16, as people left tender messages. Fallen maple leaves skittered down Brentwood Avenue alongside the crime scene tape flapping in the wind.
Chinburg ended the song, looked at his sheet music, and paused.
“These poor children and teacher will never get to realize their lives,” said Chinburg. “It’s the saddest thing on earth.”
Behind him, law enforcement officers lifted the yellow tape and walked onto the campus, the second day of their investigation into a mass shooting that killed three children — ages 5, 8, and 11 — and their teacher, 25-year-old Megan Lambert.
In every corner of Bend the last two days and nights, people have been trying to process the unimaginable, from those mourning at vigils held downtown to residents who live blocks away from the school.
Luke Reynolds, 26, was watering his parents’ garden during his lunch break Thursday afternoon when he heard sirens. At the time, he didn’t even consider it could have been a gunman in a classroom. He soon called his mother, traveling abroad, and told her what he saw on the news.
Friday, at Stone Creek Park across the street from the school, he stood on a rocky path, trying to reconcile everyday sights like the sagebrush surrounding him with the horrible scene that played out just yards away the previous afternoon.
“The juxtaposition of seeing all those memories with what you see on the national news is so heartbreaking to me,” he said.
Reynolds, who has lived in Bend all his life, went to Mountain View High School with Lambert. They went on a senior trip to Europe together. His memory of Lambert reflects what her family shared in a public statement.
Compassionate. Funny. Huge heart.
She lit up the room. Family Statement
“She always fought for the underdog and those with special needs,” the statement reads in part. “We want the bystander who intervened to know we know he is going through a rough time, but we are grateful and we think he is a hero.”
The bystander — 36-year-old Kaylub Giamanco, father of two girls at the school — was driving on Brentwood Avenue when he saw the gunman fire at another pickup truck outside the school, according to Bend police. He pulled into the parking lot, took a .40-caliber pistol legally secured in his vehicle and followed through the shot-out doors. Inside, he found a teacher struggling with the gunman and shot him multiple times, police said.
The attack is hard to make sense of, said Reynolds. He, like others Friday, stood at the memorial outside the school entrance, where people came to reflect with others.
“The community here is just as beautiful as the scenery that surrounds it,” he said. “We’re going to come together and process this tragedy that’s happened. We’re going to appreciate and respect what was taken from us.”
‘We’re going to be here with our community’
About six miles away, doors were open at the High Desert Museum, no cost of admission. Dana Whitelaw, the executive director, stood in the entrance with a soft smile.
With schools closed, she and the staff wanted to provide a place for refuge from violence, something she’s seen within her own museum walls. Ten years ago, a knife-wielding man came into the museum and held an employee hostage. An Oregon State Police trooper shot and killed him.
“It was a very different situation, but our community just showed up for us. They brought food. They said how much they loved and cared about the organization,” she said. “It hit home for me and several of our staff members who were there that day.”
Nearly 1,400 people, mostly families and teenagers, came to take in the art — and make their own — in the galleries of the institution, an affiliate of the Smithsonian.
In droves, people wandered through trails in a ponderosa pine forest behind the museum.
Whitelaw — who grew up in Eugene and raised her own family in Bend — stood by an exhibit with three lively river otters, parents and children watching them splash in a creek. The connection between animals and people is an experience in healing, she said.
“Remembering to get back into that habitat of [finding] joyful, goofy things in our world that are going to keep going on,” she said. “We’re going to be here with our community. To do that is really powerful.”
A normal response to grief
Shannon Brister-Raugust knows well that healing looks different for everyone. She is the behavioral health deputy director of health services for Deschutes County.
As the sun started to set at Larkspur Community Center, she thought about how her team, first responders, and other public service workers had been in “go mode” for a full day and a half. The county set up free counseling at the community center, based on an international model for providing support after traumatic events.
“You’re not alone in feeling grief around this.”
Health professionals, including psychologists and therapists, help people understand feelings or disruptions that they may experience in the days ahead.
Bellyaches. Headaches. Disrupted sleep.
“Not tracking the same way, forgetting things,” Brister-Raugust said, continuing a long list. “We talk about resources that are in our community because while we can anticipate that many people will experience psychological, behavioral, emotional, and cognitive reactions or responses, it’s not typical for it to last a long period of time. So, if it’s been lasting for weeks and weeks, that’s your cue to go get help, right?”
Her advice is meant for people both in Bend and beyond.
“You’re not alone in feeling grief around this, whether you’re here and directly impacted, or you’re or you’re hearing about it from afar. Your response is normal,” she said. “Whether you’re within the state, or even at a national level, at the end of the day, love will always win.”
Credit: Ashli Blow / Lookout-Eugene Springfield
In downtown Bend at Peace Corner, Gwen Baker-Yuill handed out tea candles and paper plates. So too, did a boy in a purple Silver Rails sweatshirt.
They did so without their words during the silent vigil, instead speaking through their actions as they made the rounds. Others handed out warm soup as evening temperatures became chilly.
“Amazing Grace,” among a few other hymns, came in waves as the crowd neared 200, with people coming and going.
And they passed light, one to the next, into the night.
