University of Texas Campus Tower                                   1966

First Baptist Dangerfield Church                                        1980

Luby’s Cafeteria Killeen                                                       1991

Fort Worth’s Wedgwood Baptist Church                          1999

Fort Hood   Killeen                                                              2009

Fort Hood   Killeen                                                               2014

Dallas Police Officers                                                           2016

Sutherland Springs Church                                                  2017

Santa Fe High School                                                           2018

El Paso Walmart                                                                   2019

Midland-Odessa Shopping Center                                     2019

Robb Elementary School   Uvalde                                      2022

How many tears? How many broken hearts? How many prayers? How many lives torn apart forever? How much grief and sorrow is possible to bear?

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. But these events leave me speechless. The aftermath is indefinite. The heartache is chronic and for many families, terminal.

If I could remove the harshness from society, the isolation and despair from individual lives, the meanness and mockery from social media – I would. We need an infusion of civility, compassion, acceptance and acknowledgment that many people need help – not derision and contempt. Our society needs to rally around those with mental illness, those who are susceptible to the attempts by others to turn them on their fellow Americans as if some glory or celebrity will be found from taking the lives of innocent people and children.

We must take part collectively in bringing good into our communities, in reaching out to the marginalized and helping to save others as we save ourselves in the process.

June is a season for graduations, weddings, celebrating fathers and commemorating our nation’s flag.  The celebratory feeling seems elusive right now.  But as the Covid fog lifts we find ourselves yearning to resume our traditions. So many of us will.

But many of us won’t.

Mark McKenzie

Founder and CEO