Myrna Gray
June 8, 2022
Duck - Duck - Cover
I’m not done with it yet. Nor can anyone be done with it. The school shooting in Uvalde, Texas came back into focus with a June 7 statement at the White House by Matthew McConaughey.
He eulogized victims of the recent shooting by sharing their life aspirations.
Nine-year-old Anna Rodriguez planned to become a marine biologist and had already written to the program in Corpus Cristi A & M. When her parents were asked whether to release balloons in her honor, they replied that Anna would not want to litter. She wore green Converse tennis shoes with a heart on the right toe to symbolize her love of nature. The tennis shoes were the means of identification of her body. (AR15 bullets leave large exit holes.)
Ten-year-old Alithia Ramirez’s dream was art school in Paris. McConaughey displayed a cartoonish self-portrait by the young artist, apparently reflecting on her dream from heaven – or perhaps via thought bubble. (Precognition? Or simply an example of her virtuosity and earnest vision?)
Ellie Garcia, ten years old, was a dancer and church-goer. She already drove tractors to assist in the family lawn care business. She planned to read a verse from Deuteronomy at the Wednesday evening church service. But she died on Tuesday.
These parents talked to McConaughey because they wanted their children’s dreams to live on. I am sharing his reflections because they bring the losses into focus.
Irma Garcia, their 48-year-old teacher, was also gunned down. And her husband, Joe, died of a heart attack the next day. They are survived by three children, the youngest of whom is thirteen.
McConaughey is from Uvaldi and is a gun owner himself. He advocates for changes to the laws that are, in my view, quite modest: background checks – waiting period – raise the age to 21 rather than 18 for AR15s, red flag laws, consequences for abuse, mental health care.
We can’t afford not to act.