State of the Union

I watched the President’s speech this evening and I suppose I ought to comment on the range of huge topics he addressed but I can’t.

Alright, make that, I won’t. This is mainly because this evening, I’m just plain politicked out. I’ll be back in that realm another time.

But before signing off, there was one person in the State of The Union audience that I would like to mention here.  Her name is Kaitlin Roig and she was a teacher at Sandy Hook the day a maniac walked in and started shooting.

In the first seconds of the horror, Ms. Roig herded her fourteen charges into a restroom, barricaded the door with a shelf unit and urged them to be very, very quiet.  And then, as the shots continued to ring out, she swallowed her own fears and directed her total attention to the children’s needs, keeping them calm lest they make enough noise to attract the unwanted attention of the monster.

You can find a video on the Net of Ms. Roig being interviewed by Diane Sawyer shortly after the Sandy Hook massacre. It’s about four minutes long but if you’re like me, this one quote will tell everything you’ll ever need to know about Kaitlin Roig.  “I told them, ‘ I love you all.’ I wanted the last thing they heard not to be the gunfire.”

When the firing was done and the police came to bring them out of hiding, Ms. Roig had the presence of mind to challenge them to slide their IDs under the door. And when they found a key and opened that door, they found this 29-year old woman still shielding “her kids.”

We have a lot of problems in this country. They won’t all be easy to resolve and some of them are likely to get worse before they get better. But tonight I am reminded that there are still adults who in extremus will swallow their own fears to secure the safety of other people’s children.

That’s the real state of our union. At least I’d like to think it is.