Moment of silence in memory of victims

On December 17, 2012, Congressman Chris Murphy of Connecticut, who represents Newtown, made the following remarks on the House floor and then asked for a moment of silence in memory of the victims of Sandy Hook Elementary. In senseless circumstances, his words do honor to the victims and the community:

Mr. Speaker, on Friday morning, I brought my 4-year-old to school. I dropped him off at 8:45, just like millions of other parents did all across this country, and a few hours later I saw him again. He had a big smile on his face.

In Newtown , Connecticut, on Friday, 20 parents dropped their first graders off at Sandy Hook Elementary or kissed them good-bye as they got on the school bus, and that was the last time they saw their kids.

Something horrible, something unexplainable happened at Sandy Hook Elementary last week. When people ask me how are folks doing, I tell them right now there's a lot of blank looks, these people are just trying to process what happened. Twenty gleaming, beautiful children were gunned down, along with six adults who loved them dearly, by a young man with a sickness that masqueraded as evil that day.

So we are left asking all these questions: Why? Why us? Why these little kids? Why did he do it? Why weren't we able to prevent this from happening? The whys are almost infinite.

In the coming days and weeks, I guess we'll get some answers to these questions, but most of them won't have answers. But when you peek through this vast crippling darkness of the last 4 days, there's one answer that we know for certain. If we ever wondered what kind of community Newtown was, if we ever doubted the deepness of our love for one another, those questions have been answered, and they've been answered definitively.

They were answered by Principal Dawn Hochsprung, who told her colleagues to run one way so that she could run the other way, directly toward the gunman. They were answered by Victoria Soto, who hid her kids in a closet and died shielding her students from the assassin's bullets. And they've been answered by the thousands of individual acts of humanity that have overflowed from the people of Newtown in the days since the shooting, a community just pouring out love trying to help console this incalculable grief.

I went to the first of too many funerals this morning, and the last thing we know is this: All those wonderful little faces that you see on TV and in the newspaper, like Noah Pozner, who was laid to rest this morning, they're a reminder that despite the terrible and awful things that happened, that inside the hearts of all of this is this unbelievable goodness. That's all Noah Pozner had was goodness, was just this purity of spirit.

Newtown is going to survive this because it's a close town. They hurt more because they're close, but they also can survive because they're close. And they can also survive because they will get this inspiration from these 20 little kids who are asking this town to remember how good they were and try to equal that.

As Newtown wrestles with this grief and recovery, the thoughts and the prayers from others matter. I want to thank everyone here for all of the individual love that you've showered down upon our little town. I want to thank the Connecticut delegation here with me today for all of their support. It helps in some small way to know that the world is grieving with us.

So, Mr. Speaker, I would ask that the House now rise and observe a moment of silence for the 20 beautiful children and six courageous adults who perished on a crisp, cold Friday morning in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.