I have personal ties to Newtown, CT. It is my father’s home town and I still have family that lives there. Newtown is my home away from home and I love it there. It is the last place I ever thought a massacre like this would happen. To give everyone an idea of what Newtown is like, it used to be a town like Galway, very small, but though the population has grown, it still has that everyone knows everyone kind of feel. It is the only town in the country that has a flag pole in the middle of the road; the flag pole was there before the road. There is nothing around the flag pole, so people can literally drive right into it if not careful.

Though my father didn’t go to Sandy Hook Elementary, every morning he would get on the bus and the bus would take him there, and he would wait in the gym at Sandy Hook for another bus that would come pick him up and take him to his school. My Aunt Sharon went to kindergarten at Sandy Hook and I have some cousins that did too.

My cousin Jamie is a substitute teacher and he was called in to go work at Sandy Hook the morning of the shooting.  Luckily, he called in sick.  I’m saddened by everything that has happened and at first I thought it was just a bad dream that I couldn’t wake up from.

To help out, I have talked to Mrs. Donovan and she said that after the holiday break,  Galway students can have a fundraiser to gather money for the families, school, or possibly the town of Newtown’s emergency squads.  All the families that are affected by what happened in Newtown are in my thoughts.