Letters to Newtown

Yolie Moreno, in front of her barn on June 28, 2014, talks about sorting through several hundred thousand pieces of mail from around the world sent to Newtown after the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting. Moreno took photos of many of the notes, drawings, gifts and other letters and compiled them on embracingnewtown.com. Morgan Spiehs

By Sarah Ferris

Newtown’s Yolie Moreno said she once could not have imagined what one million pieces of mail would look like.

But in the weeks following the December 2012 shooting, nearly every town building in Newtown, Conn. became a makeshift storage center for hundreds of thousands of letters and cards.

Moreno, whose daughter attended first grade at another school in town, remembers walking into a room at the Newtown Town Hall that was lined with banners, posters, photographs and paintings from floor to ceiling. Boxes were piled everywhere, full of letters from schoolchildren, church congregations and families whose lives had also been touched by gun violence.

– Cezanne, a student from New York City wrote: “I feel your pain every day in my bed, as I remember Olivia, a tiny girl who loved hip hop in my dance class, a victim of tragedy.”

– Lydia, a grandmother who lost two of her children at young ages, wrote: “My world had been turned upside down two times and I didn’t know how I could go on.”

– Brenda, a mother who recently lost her son, wrote: “I know that soul wrenching loss that you feel. If I can do one thing for you, I would like to offer you some hope.”

“I just couldn’t believe it,” Moreno said in an interview last month. “You walked in and it felt like it was a giant hug.”

Yolie Moreno holds up her necklace with a vial of sacred soil made out of incinerated letters, gifts and other mail sent by people around the world after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Before the items were incinerated, Moreno helped digitally document and compile them. The sacred soil will potentially be made into bricks and used to make a memorial. Morgan Spiehs

The town eventually burned all the mail, but first, Moreno decided to document it. For nearly a year, she photographed every letter and card that was sent to Newtown, creating a digital archive that she hoped would let people worldwide know that their mail mattered.

She crouched on her hands and knees at the town’s municipal center for months – sometimes crying as she read the letters. She eventually became close with several families who had lost children and began picking out the cards and letters she thought they would want to read.

Last spring, Moreno watched the contents of four tractor-trailers – piles of those opened letters, soggy teddy bears and burned out candles that were part of a memorial – go into an incinerator to be burned.  It came out in one small box of ashes, which the town has called “sacred soil.”

“This is the true nature of human beings, when something bad happens, all you want to do is help,” Moreno said.

Spotlight on the Fellows: Morgan Spiehs

Name: Morgan Spiehs, Peter Kiewet Fellow

School: University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Style of reporting: Photojournalism and multimedia

Previous internship or work experience: I worked for the Daily Nebraskan for over two years as a senior photographer and photo editor. I’ve been a photo intern at Northeast Nebraska News Company and The Lincoln Journal Star.

Favorite reporting experience: Traveling to Ethiopia to photograph a circus that gives back to the community by giving poor and homeless children a place to go. The circus members hardly have more than the clothes on their back yet they share everything from food to beds to helping pay for a previous member’s college tuition.

Connect with me: @morganspiehs on Twitter and Instagram

Website: https://morganspiehs.22slides.com/

Favorite app: Instagram

Spotlight on the Fellows: Lauren Loftus

Lauren Loftus reports in Austin, Texas. Photo by: Natalie Krebs

Name: Lauren Loftus, Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation Fellow

School: Arizona State University

Style of reporting: Feature writing, in-depth and investigative, multimedia

Previous internship or work experience: Before going to graduate school, I worked a hodgepodge of writing jobs, including for a radio news wire service, a travel magazine, a start-up website and as the copywriter at a small university. I also backpacked solo across Central America and blogged about it.

Favorite reporting experience: Traveling two hours through a perilously foggy road to meet an indigenous midwife in Chiapas, Mexico, and watching as she correctly guessed the sex of an unborn baby just by touching her patient’s belly.

Connect with me: @thelaurenloftus

Website: laurenloftus.com

Favorite app: Google Maps because I’d be hopelessly lost without it.

Baton Rouge sergeant hosts gun violence demonstration

By Jon LaFlamme
Sgt. Brian Firmin of the Baton Rouge City Constable’s Office shoots a watermelon with a firearm to demonstrate the effects of gun violence at the city’s annual health and safety fair Friday, June 21, 2014.

Jon LaFlamme is the News21 Weil Fellow.

Spotlight on the Fellows: Natalie Krebs

Natalie Krebs takes a portrait of Olympian and Top Shots contestant Gabby Franco in Miami, Florida. Photo by: Lauren Loftus

Name: Natalie Krebs

School: University of Texas-Austin

Style of reporting: Long-form narrative pieces, photography and radio.

Previous internship or work experience: I’ve interned at KUT, the NPR affiliate for Austin, Texas, and the Texas Observer magazine. I previously freelanced for The Word out of Hanoi, Vietnam.

Favorite reporting experience: Chasing down a trash collector who was working in Hanoi to ask about waste management in the city or holding a newborn bunny while reporting on urban farming in Austin.

Connect with me: @Natalie_Krebs (Twitter) @natalierkrebs (Instagram)

Website: natalierkrebs.com

Favorite app: Instagram