Kids Point the Way

Towards a Healing

Over the last few weeks, Randolph and our surrounding community suffered a severe trauma that will affect all of us for the rest of our lives.

Too often we believe that because Vermont is a great place to live (the safest state in the USA, true) we are protected from the aberrant and horrible behavior that we experienced from an individual in our community.

The death of anyone is sad, the death of a young child awful, the violent death of a child (or anyone) is unthinkable but as we saw this week, a real and very rare part of the dark side of human beings.

As with most of you, I found myself crying when hearing of the horrible events and wondered what we as a community could have done to prevent this. There is no answer. We all do our best and sometimes this type of behavior still shows its ugly head. I found myself depressed for the young, vibrant child who suffered and died. I was depressed for the other children abused by this man. I was depressed for the families involved and also for our entire community. When this type of tragedy happens it affects us all. We will spend a good deal of time healing.

On Friday evening, we attended the performance of "The Sound of Music" at Chandler Center for the arts. And almost immediately as I walked toward the theater, I found myself beginning to heal. As I entered the hall, saw the large crowd and then sat down to enjoy the performance, I began to feel the energy, the vitality of who we really are as a community.

It was the children and their families of this wonderful community that brought to me the first steps toward healing.

The performance was outstanding. It was full of energy, talent, community spirit, community cooperation and the incredible effort on the part of over 100 children and their family and friends. The music, the sets, the acting filled my heart with promise for the future. The audience, a packed house, responded to this energy and I realized "This is our community, this is what we are all about!" The aberrant events of the last few weeks are also part of our community, but they are not who we are.

We are a strong community, a community that is vibrant, full of life, love and spirit. The children of our community and their families and friends brought faith for the future back to me as the children have for my entire 32 years as a pediatrician in Randolph. We will survive through this tragedy and become stronger yet as we heal together.

Dr. Louis DiNicola, Randolph

(Editor’s Note: Dr. DiNicola has been a pediatrician and child advocate at Gifford Memorial Hospital in Randolph for about 30 years.)