Georgetown, Pa. – They came from across the Pennsylvania countryside dressed in black, bearded men in hats and suits, women in dresses and bonnets. Famous for keeping the surrounding society out, their mourning was remarkable for what they let in: forgiveness.
The Amish gathered for two-hour funerals in the homes of their friends before climbing into horse-drawn buggies and making their way, one by one, to a wind-swept, hilltop cemetery.
They did it three times Thursday for four young girls killed by a gunman Monday in the one-room West Nickel Mines Amish School. A fifth victim’s funeral was set for today, and the community faced the prospect that at least one of the five girls wounded could die.
State troopers blocked off all roads into the village of Nickel Mines and led the buggies and black carriages holding the girls’ hand-sawn wooden coffins.
Funeral processions passed the home of Charles Carl Roberts IV, the 32-year-old milk-truck driver who took the girls hostage, tied them up and shot them before killing himself.
Benjamin Nieto, 57, watched the processions from a friend’s porch.
“They were just little people,” he said of the victims. “They never got a chance to do anything.”
The attack was so traumatic the schoolhouse may soon be razed to obliterate the memories. Even so, many Amish have embraced Roberts’ relatives, who may receive money from a fund established to help victims and their families.
The family of 13-year-old victim Marian Fisher even invited Roberts’ wife, Marie, to her funeral; it was unclear whether she attended.
Marie Roberts’ family said Thursday that the families knew each other because the Fisher farm was a regular stop on Charles Roberts’ milk route.
Funerals also were held for 7-year-old Naomi Rose Ebersol, and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7. The funeral for 12-year-old Anna Mae Stoltzfus was scheduled for today.
The girls, in white dresses made by their families, were laid to rest in graves dug by hand in a small burial ground bordered by cornfields and a white rail fence.
Amish custom calls for simple wooden coffins, narrow at the head and feet and wider in the middle.
Media were blocked from the funerals and the burials, and airspace for 2 1/2 miles in all directions was closed to news helicopters.
During the slow processions, the clip-clop of the horses was broken up only by the roar of official helicopters enforcing the no-fly zone.
