124 Years That Should Have Been Two Thousand Years
Dec. 14, 2014 was the second anniversary of the horrific massacre of 20 young children (and six of their teachers), inside Newtown, Connecticut’s Sandy Hook Elementary School.
To me, a retired elementary school teacher, it will always be another “date which will live in infamy,” even though it did not take the more than 2,000 lives, which led President Franklin D. Roosevelt to brand the Dec. 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor with that famous phrase; nor the almost 3,000 lives lost in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, Washington D.C. and Shanksville, PA.
Personally, I have always felt that referring to that horrible day, which I still call “September 11,” as “9/11” was disrespectful; mainly because it only helped newspaper headline writers save space, and allowed people to say it with two fewer syllables. It was also a less than ideal choice since “911” was already institutionalized as a national emergency phone number. However, when it comes to the Connecticut school shooting, I agree with the Newtown resident who asked that her town’s tragedy only be referred to as the numerically-dated “12/14,” so as not to forever brand her town’s name synonymously with this unspeakably evil act.
For me, there are a lot of other numbers that “12/14” brings to mind.
First, there are the 20 youngest victims, who were all just first grade students. Four of them were only 7 years old, and 16 of them were just 6 years old. Together, they had only lived a combined 124 years, only two years longer than the oldest human life span ever recorded. During the same month they died, the two oldest people in the world also died, although not violently, and at the very advanced ages of 115 and 116 years old.
These 20 children, collectively, should have had decades, centuries and even millennia of life ahead of them.
So please, let me count the ways that 7-year-olds Daniel Barden, Josephine Gay, Chase Kowalski and Grace McDonnell; plus 6-year-olds Charlotte Bacon, Olivia Engel, Ana M. Marquez-Greene, Dylan Hockley, Madeleine F. Hsu, Catherine V. Hubbard, Jesse Lewis, James Mattioli, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner, Caroline Previdi, Jessica Rekos, Avielle Richman, Benjamin Wheeler and Allison N. Wyatt were all “cheated” by their way-too-early deaths.
None of them ever got to celebrate a double-digit birthday, much less have a chance to blow out nine, or even eight candles on their birthday cakes. They never got to turn 13 and have a bar or bat mitzvah, nor did any of the girls get to have their Sweet Sixteen party. They never got the chance to graduate from elementary school, much less middle school or junior high school. If they had lived to graduate from high school at the age of 18, they at least would have had a combined 360 years of learning and laughter. Had they lived into official adulthood at 21, that would have meant a combined 420 years of education and enjoyment. Turning 22 and graduating from college would have afforded their mothers and fathers 440 years of parental pride. Had they each reached 50 years of age, besides their AARP memberships, they would have had 1,000 years in which to enjoy the happiness and excitement from marriages and children, not to mention providing their own parents with grandchildren to spoil. Had they been “allowed” to reach the Social Security age of 62, that would have meant a combined 1,240 years of life, including working at jobs that would have contributed to many aspects of American life. Getting to retire and earn Medicare benefits at age 65 would have meant a combined 1,300 years of living life to its fullest for all of them, including award-winning careers and then a relaxing and well-deserved retirement.
If they each got their Biblical “three score and 10” years, that would have given them a combined 1,400 years to live and love.
Given their actuarially average life spans of 80 years each, they would have had 1,600 years in which they would even have had grandchildren of their own.
Although President Abraham Lincoln was not referring to individual life spans with his oft-quoted reference to “four score and seven years ago,” I will take some poetic license and fantasize about giving each of those kids those 87 years of life, which would have totaled 1,740 years of freedom to live their lives as they saw fit.
If I could somehow bring them all back to life, I would give them a total of 2,000 years; enabling each of them to become a centenarian, with enough good health to blow out—with one single breath—all 100 candles on the biggest and best birthday cake of his or her whole, long life.
Richard Siegelman is a Plainview resident who taught for 37 years in Oyster Bay-East Norwich public schools. Email him at mrsiegelman@yahoo.com.
