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VANDERBILT TRANSFERS
APRIL 6, 2023 | VOLUME 35 | NUMBER 14
Memorial altars bearing the images of the victims of The Covenant School shooting stand at a memorial outside of the school. PHOTO BY MATT MASTERS
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The family of Mike Hill, one of the six victims of The Covenant School shooting, attend the March 29 Nashville vigil. PHOTO BY MATT MASTERS
Communities across Middle Tennessee mourn Covenant School shooting victims BY MATT MASTERS, LOGAN BUTTS, KELSEY BEYELER, STEPHEN ELLIOTT, HANNAH HERNER, AND D. PATRICK RODGERS In the week following the March 27 fatal Covenant School shooting communities from across Middle Tennessee responded with shock, grief and outrage as the ‘targeted attack’ brought an international spotlight on the Green Hills church and school. In the hours after the “targeted attack,” makeshift memorials popped up around the closed entrances of The Covenant School, honoring the lives of the six victims -- three children, Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney, and three school staff members, Cindy Peak, Mike Hill and Katherine Koonce. Those memorials grew throughout the following days as hundreds of mourners from Green Hills, the greater Nashville community, and people from afar offered bouquets of flowers, balloons, handwritten notes and signs, stuffed animals, white crosses with notes and prayers written in black marker. On March 29, Los Angeles-based arts
nonprofit organization Classroom of Compassion placed six altars, each featuring large photographs of the victims decorated with flowers, at the makeshift memorial site that popped up outside of the entrance to The Covenant School. Classroom of Compassion Founders David Maldonado and Noah Reich began the project in 2018 and have traveled to the sites of about a dozen mass shootings including Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the sites of mass shootings incidents in 2022. One visitor offering his condolences and prayers was Dorian Botsis, Executive Pastor for Boston, Massachusetts-based Faith Community Church, who was visiting Nashville for a professional conference. “I’m tired of the death, tired of the tragedy, and I mean, I’m a pastor, so we believe in the power of prayer, so I wanted to come and pray where the tragedy happened, but we need people to act, we need people to
make a difference in how they’re operating,” Botsis said. “Part of what I’m praying is that people will take a moment and step away from the entrenched positions around gun violence, and start paying attention to the death that’s happening so that we can stop the death and start having children and educators and custodians, the workers and builders of our societies, have them be alive, and doing what they do best, which is build societies build communities, not have them be destroyed.” For some mourners like Bellevue residents Leigh Ann Portale and her 18-year-old daughter Ella Portale, paying their respects was personal and difficult, as Ella had at one time been a student of The Covenant School, and recalled her memories of one of the victims, custodian Mike Hill. “He was just a great guy, always willing to help and just always the first one to offer anything to the students, [he] built relationships with the students and just was
18-year-old Ella Portale, a former student of The Covenant School, writes a message on a memorial cross outside of the school. PHOTO BY MATT MASTERS never shy,” Ella Portale said. “I have this one memory of coming in from recess and it was muddy, >> PAGE 2
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