Tragedy

 Farmingdale High School is a 20 minute drive from my home. I’ve spent time in Farmingdale: there are some great restaurants in that town, two nice multiplex movie theaters, a huge wine store and Stew Leonard’s very quirky grocery store.

Farmingdale High School has experienced an enormous tragedy. 

You will no doubt have heard about yesterday’s bus accident.  Six buses headed from Farmingdale High School, loaded with students and their chaperones, headed to a band camp in Pennsylvania.  As the buses traveled through upstate Orange County towards the Pennsylvania border, the first bus lost control and rolled down an embankment into a ravine.  Two adults — the band teacher and another chaperone — were killed.  Five other passengers are in critical condition.  

All of the students on that bus are traumatized.  All of the students in the other buses, who saw the accident, are traumatized.  The whole school, the whole community, are traumatized.

Drew sent me a text this morning.  He teaches in a high school, thankfully not Farmingdale.  One of his coworkers is married to someone on Farmingdale’s faculty.  He’s been hearing a lot of information that isn’t on the news, details about who was injured/killed and what types of injuries everyone sustained.  It’s horrific.

When Jen and Becca were in high school, their school community experienced a tragic loss.  The president of the student council, a very likable and popular young man, was killed in a car accident the night before homecoming.  His death cast a pall over the entire school community.  I watched those children grieve and I just wanted to hug each and every one.  

And that’s what’s going on in Farmingdale this morning, but on a much larger scale.   I am crying …