NEWTOWN, Conn. — Scarlett Lewis sees reminders of her son Jesse — who died at age 6 with 19 classmates and six educators in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting — in photographs on her refrigerator door, in portraits she painted of him from memory and now, uncomfortably, in the Newtown Community Center, a soaring new complex. But to Ms. Lewis and some others who lost family at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the new center feels more like a wound. Although the tidal wave of aid bore witness to the power of human kindness, so much money engulfed the vulnerable, wounded Newtown that it inevitably sowed division. The town became a case study of how Americans’ material expressions of grief can become more an obstacle than an aid to recovery. At the heart of the trouble was a question: Should donations in the aftermath of tragedy go to the victims’ families or be shared with the entire community?

Source: New York Times May 25, 2019 17:02 UTC