Newtown CT school shooting may involve Clare descendants
Posted: Fri Dec 14, 2012 9:36 pm
With regret, I feel it is necessary and appropriate to observe that, even in 2012, the casualties today may well include someone in the group of remaining Clare descendants who relocated in Newton. As of 1900 many dozens of Clare immigrants were there, although then (as now) this is a rural and quiet area. The appalling nature of this violence is forever impressed on those who survived. Having grown up in a similar place within about 50 miles from Newtown, I know the mindset and outlooks of these young children and their older siblings.
The involved school is an elementary one, meaning the children in the building were age 12 and younger. Very typically, each class has been together since kindergarten, with only a few children moving away and only a few joining each class as the years go by. My senior class at the time of high school graduation had only 35 in it. None of us experienced any life-threatening event nor did there appear to be any reason to anticipate a bad event. Life seems especially secure in a rural place. I cannot imagine the effort it will be take to pick up the pieces and go forward, for anyone there. They deserve your sympathy and prayers.
When the casualty list is made public, if there is a surname that seems like a Clare one, you can assume it is. That is particularly true for Keane/Kane, which I know from having researched those families there. I realized at that time that the twins Jim and John Kane in the class preceding mine in my school were very likely from a Clare family, resettled first in Newton and then in Poughkeepsie, just 20 miles from my home town.
It's a very sad, sorry day.
Sharon Carberry
This is a postscript: These children were in a building that housed grades one through four (so that the oldest student would be about age 10). Of the 20 children who were killed, all ages 6 and 7, the surnames of McDonnell and Murphy were included. I will not comment further, as I have only trenchant thoughts on my mind.
The involved school is an elementary one, meaning the children in the building were age 12 and younger. Very typically, each class has been together since kindergarten, with only a few children moving away and only a few joining each class as the years go by. My senior class at the time of high school graduation had only 35 in it. None of us experienced any life-threatening event nor did there appear to be any reason to anticipate a bad event. Life seems especially secure in a rural place. I cannot imagine the effort it will be take to pick up the pieces and go forward, for anyone there. They deserve your sympathy and prayers.
When the casualty list is made public, if there is a surname that seems like a Clare one, you can assume it is. That is particularly true for Keane/Kane, which I know from having researched those families there. I realized at that time that the twins Jim and John Kane in the class preceding mine in my school were very likely from a Clare family, resettled first in Newton and then in Poughkeepsie, just 20 miles from my home town.
It's a very sad, sorry day.
Sharon Carberry
This is a postscript: These children were in a building that housed grades one through four (so that the oldest student would be about age 10). Of the 20 children who were killed, all ages 6 and 7, the surnames of McDonnell and Murphy were included. I will not comment further, as I have only trenchant thoughts on my mind.