Parkland: True heroes

Parkland: Heroes—to save children, they placed their lives in danger, with some dying to do so.

Jun 29, 2024

Inspiring History

Our grandson Nash was a student at Parkland, Florida’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. He went to school on Valentine’s Day after he and his family sang and wished me happy birthday.

That afternoon, the dark shadow of terror and death fell upon Nash’s school. A gunman snuck through a side gate with an automatic rifle and killing seventeen students and faculty as well as wounding seventeen more. This mass shooting was the deadliest high school shooting in US History.

The killing spree was an evil incident stoked with ill intent and resulting in grievous loss of innocent life.

But it also produced some of the best qualities and action of humanity.

An assistant football coach and security guard, Aaron Feis, used his body to shield students and was killed. Athletic director, Christopher Hixon, was killed as he ran toward the gunfire in attempt to help fleeing students.

A fifteen-year-old student, Peter Wang, wearing his Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps uniform, held doors open for students on the third floor to exit more quickly. As a result of his sacrifice, Wang died.

Due to the fire alarms and gunshot sounds, the third-floor teachers had some additional time to process what was happening that the first-floor teachers did not. Nash’s class was unseen by the shooter from the glass window of the classroom door, by his English teacher, Debbie Jacobson, by hiding the students behind a large storage cabinet. In other classrooms, that was not possible. Across the hall, the cross-country coach and Nash’s world geography teacher, Scott J. Beigel, was trying to get the students back in as only a few students made it back to his classroom, having heard the gunfire. Beigel heard the screams of students trapped in the hallway and, when letting them into the classroom, was killed by the gunman.

Also, along the third floor senior Meadow Jade Pollack was shot four times in the hallway and tried to get into a locked door. Fourteen-year-old freshman Cara Loughran covered Pollack with her body and tried to shield her. As the gunman returned from firing on other classrooms, he shot five more times and killed both girls.

Anthony Borges was a fifteen-year-old who was shot five times as he barricaded the door of his classroom with twenty students inside as he used his body to protect them. He lived.

Nash survived.

As we are confronted with the worst that humanity has to offer, there always seems to be those of us who will step up. This may be the least amongst us, and persons who may not have been considered brave or capable. But there are people who exhibit examples of Profiles in Character who rise to the challenge and may yield to the ultimate sacrifice to save the lives of others.

In the Parkland shooting, there were many who stepped up and put their lives in danger to aid and save others.

How great a virtuous quality this is.