IN REMEMBRANCE: A woman at the Capitol in Montgomery, Ala., rings a bell yesterday morning to mark the week passed since the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre — one of many such ceremonies around the country. (
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Traffic stopped in the street. Red-eyed firefighters bowed their heads at a memorial filled with teddy bears. Newtown residents hugged and wept.
The nation’s heart broke again yesterday, as church bells rang out 26 times — once for each victim of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
Bells at the Trinity Episcopal Church in Newtown, Conn., chimed at 9:30 a.m., around the same moment exactly a week ago that the unimaginable horror started unfolding there.
“When I heard the 26 bells ring, it just melted my soul,” said Kerrie Glassman of Newtown, who knew seven of the victims. “It’s just overwhelming. You just can’t believe this happened in our town.”
All through the nation, other churches joined in the solemn bell ringing.
In New York, bells at downtown Manhattan’s Trinity Church tolled 28 times: once for each of the 20 first-graders and six educators killed at the school — and also for suicidal murderer Adam Lanza, 20, and his mother, Nancy Lanza, whom he gunned down first.
In local schools and in others across the nation, children observed a minute of silence.
The heartbreaking remembrance of the tragedy came on the same day that families and friends gathered for two more funerals.
They included that of bright little Olivia Rose Engel, 6, who was supposed to play the angel in her church’s Nativity play before she was slain.
Every pew at St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church was filled as Olivia’s off-white coffin was wheeled into the church.
A small purple bow — a nod to the child’s favorite color — was tied to a handle on one side of the coffin. A wooden crucifix was placed atop.
Mourners wore purple and pink ribbons while pallbearers wore purple ties.
“If you ever met Olivia, chances are she had you wrapped around her little finger,” said godmother Julie Pokrinchak. “That’s Olivia: So much life, she laughed the hardest.”
Her favorite school event was Library Day, when she got to spend time going through some of her favorite books, including “The Grouchy Ladybug.”
And when at home, she loved to dress up.
“The girl knew how to accessorize,” Pokrinchak said. “She was beautiful, and she knew it.”
Collages of pictures of a happy Olivia were placed in the vestibule of the church.
Twenty miles away, tearful mourners packed the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, Conn., where a casket carrying behavioral therapist Rachel Davino, 29, was placed in front covered in a white, gold-trimmed tapestry surrounded by flowers.
Relatives remembered a caring professional who was supposed to be celebrating an upcoming engagement to be married — not buried.
“Nothing can mend the wounds of our beautiful angel being taken,” said her sister, Sarah Davino.
Wakes were also held for Grace McDonnell, 7, and Emilie Parker, 6, as well as 7-year-olds Josephine Gay and Dylan Hockley and school psychologist Mary Sherlach, 56.