Newtown remembers those killed at Sandy Hook a decade after the tragedy

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• Judy Woodruff:

  On this day 10 years ago, a mass shooting forever changed a small town of Newtown, Connecticut.

  Twenty students and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It was one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history.

  William Brangham spoke with one of the parents who lost a child that day.

• William Brangham:

  Just steps away from the rebuilt Sandy Hook Elementary School sits a new memorial site, and etched into the ring of granite are 26 names of those massacred that day.

  One of them is Dylan Hockley, a 6-year-old first grader. In the decades since his murder, his mother, Nicole Hockley, along with other Sandy Hook families, have channeled their grief into action. Hockley co-founded the organization Sandy Hook Promise. It's a nonprofit that works to prevent further tragedies by helping students identify and report the warning signs of someone who is planning violence.

  I spoke with Hockley yesterday just ahead of today's anniversary.

  Ten years ago, what was probably the worst day of your entire life happens, and your whole family has to deal with that blow and suffer through that trauma and that grief.

  But now here we are almost 10 years later. How does that grief sit with you today? Is that ever-present? Does it wax and wane? What is that like for you today?

• Nicole Hockley, Co-Founder, Sandy Hook Promise:

  The grief is absolutely ever-present.

  And I think about Dylan every single day. But it's kind of like a scab has formed over my heart. And, at times, is if a certain memory comes up or a certain smell or another tragedy occurs, it's like that scab is ripped off and my heart is broken and bleeding all over again.

  And as time goes by, the amount of time that scab stays on is longer. But it's still ever-present and part of my daily life.

• William Brangham:

  So, that wound hasn't healed in any way that we would recognize, fully healed?

• Nicole Hockley:

  No. And I don't — I don't expect it to ever fully heal.

  I'm a mom whose son was murdered in his first grade classroom. That's not something that you move on from. It's just something that you live with every day and find a way to keep moving forward.

• William Brangham:

  When tragedies like this occur, I mean, obviously, the person is taken away from you. But that person is also then frozen in time. I mean, Dylan will always be a 6-year-old boy.

  And yet time marches on you get older. Your son Jake gets older. But yet Dylan is always just that little boy.

• Nicole Hockley:

  Well, I mean, I can only really speak for me and my experiences.

  Even my surviving son has — is forging a different path and a different experience and is processing things differently. But it is — time is pretty warped, really. Like, I can't really reconcile the fact that it's been 10 years since I held Dylan, since I heard him laugh, since I took him to school.

  And yet Jake, my surviving son, is now 18. He was at the school that day. He was in third grade. He's now a freshman in college. He's taller than me. And I also see other kids — that Dylan is forever 6. And I see other kids in his grade who are now 16, who are now in high school and starting to think about college, and they're taller than me. And they're more — they're mature. And yet Dylan is forever my 6-year-old boy.

  He is frozen in time, and that life is very much frozen in time as well.

• William Brangham:

  We're approaching this anniversary, this 10-year event, where the rest of the country again tries in its own way to commemorate and remember what happened.

  I know that there's that conversation that's also going on in your community of Newtown as to how much this event resonates, how it, I don't know, defines or redefines your community.

  How — when you're out in the town of Newtown, how does that feel? Do you feel like it is also an ever-present part of that community?

• Nicole Hockley:

  I think, for some people, it is an ever-present part.

  It's not a — Newtown is not defined by the tragedy, but you can't go out in the rest of the country and say you're from Newtown or Sandy Hook without someone making a remark and wanting to share their experience. Even, quite often, you hear people talk about how, I remember where I was when I heard the news.

  It's become a moment in our American history. And I think, for many residents of Newtown, it is ever-present. However, they — the people that I talk to and that I know want to also be remembered as a place that created change.

• William Brangham:

  Your organization, Sandy Hook Promise, runs trainings to try to train people to help identify who out there might be troubled, and to teach people how to intervene.

  Can you tell us a little bit more about that work?

• Nicole Hockley:

  Sure.

  It is absolutely critical to recognize warning signs when someone might be going into crisis or needs help, is at risk of hurting themselves or hurting someone else, and then take action to intervene. And the reason that we focus our programs in schools is because a lot of these at-risk behaviors, especially that manifest in the teenage years and the early 20s, a lot of this is on social media.

  And kids are able to see and hear things that the adults are not able to. They are communicating on different channels from adults. So that's why we teach kids, how do you — how do you recognize when your friend needs help? How do you recognize a subtle or an overt threat on social media? And how do you take action to get that information to a trusted adult, so that an intervention can be made?

• William Brangham:

  May I ask about Jake, your other son, who also — he survived that shooting that terrible day. And he's grown up in a world where not only did he have to deal with that loss of a brother, but he also sees on the news the news about mass shootings constantly.

  And I wonder, what's your sense of what that does to him, how he sees the world, how he is processing all of that?

• Nicole Hockley:

  You know, it's interesting.

  Jake is — he's kind of a silent processor. You know that they say still waters run deep. And I think that's very much the case with Jake. He is so aware and has huge empathy and compassion, yet he has decided not to use his voice yet. He really wants to define himself and his own path.

  And it's hard to know sometimes what's typical teenage boy and what's grief. So we talk about that a lot. And I'm so proud of the young man that he is and the person that he continues to become. And I don't know. I think, sometimes, he's seen the worst that the world can give you. And he's experienced in live that. And he has also seen that you can survive that and create your own destiny.

• William Brangham:

  We are talking with you before the anniversary, this 10-year anniversary.

  And I know that, on the day, you, as you say, go silent. And I wonder, can you just share a little bit about what it is you do on the actual anniversary?

• Nicole Hockley:

  I will wake up, as I always do, and kiss Dylan's urn and tell him that I love him and I miss him.

  I quite often go to his playground, which is at an elementary school in Southern Connecticut, and have some quiet time there. And then I usually leave behind some sort of memento at his playground. Sometimes, it's little glass stones that I paint on. Or, once, I brought one of his stuffed animals and left it on the bench for some other child.

  There's something that I will usually leave behind and bury there, just — it's just one of my rituals. And then I usually just go to a beach. And we will walk the shores for several hours, because it's a way for me to ground myself and be in nature, and not — it helps me from my grief overwhelming me to be nearer to nature and know that there's something significantly larger than me and my grief.

• William Brangham:

  It sounds like a beautiful way to remember and to keep living.

  Nicole Hockley, so good to talk to you. Thank you so much for talking with us.

• Nicole Hockley:

  Thank you for the opportunity.

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