THURSDAY, JUNE 9 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
texas school shootingLonnie, departed Buffalo in a
hurry, leaving behind the RV
that carries them from gun mas-
sacre to gun massacre, where
they distribute a survivors’ tool
kit to mortuaries, schools and
more. Uvalde was the 19th mass-
shooting site they have visited
since their daughter, Jessi, was
killed in a movie theater.
“We have talked about just
setting up a table and having
this information there for who-
ever may need it. But we always
hesitate to become part of the
circus,” said Sandy, describing
street preachers and motorcycle
ministers. “They were just loud
and obnoxious, and it made me
sad that this quiet little commu-
nity was being inundated.”
It was calmer on Thursday
evening in the town plaza,
where Knights of Columbus
from various Te xas chapters
flipped burgers in 91-degree
heat.
A teacher from Albuquerque
sang a Sarah McLachlan song
and explained to those gathered
that she knew Uvalde would be
different from what she saw on
television, so she “had to be
here.” The crowd, mostly locals,
sat in camp chairs and seemed
appreciative.
Earlier that day, Dion Green
stood on the sidelines of the
memorial in a T-shirt that read
“NOT ONE MORE.” He survived
a 2019 mass shooting in Dayton,
Ohio, that killed nine people,
including his father, who died in
his arms. Green had also just
come from Buffalo.
“Every time, there’s another
one. Just like yesterday, Okla-
homa,” Green said, referring to a
shooting June 1 at a Tulsa hospi-
tal that killed four people. “I just
try to offer light and hope so
people can be able to move
forward. It takes time.”
Over at Robb, onlookers
walked slowly past another me-
morial. A few houses away, a
woman sold brisket from herdriveway to raise money for the
family of one dead child. She
was relieved, she said, that the
television vans with their lights
had thinned.
Across the street from the
school, Roberto Marquez took a
break from the colorful, angular
mural he had been working on
for two days in a yard whose
owner, he said, had granted him
permission. “I don’t trespass,”
said Marquez, 60, who wore a
black cowboy hat.
When the Uvalde shooting
occurred, Marquez had only re-
cently arrived home to Dallas
after nearly three months paint-
ing in Ukraine. This was his
mission now, Marquez said: Go-
ing from crisis to crisis — mi-
grant caravans, the Surfside
condo collapse — to create art.
“Very few times I’ve felt re-
jected,” he said. “Most of the
time, people, they feel that what
I’m doing is right.”
Uvalde was only the third stop
on Graham’s cowboy listening
tour. A onetime advertising
salesman in Southern Califor-
nia, he said he used to openly
mock Christianity, using hotel
Bible pages to roll joints. Then
one night he paused to read a
verse, and he became a believer,
though not an evangelist.
Graham said he had long
done relief work, lending his
muscles to haul wet furniture
from hurricane-flooded homes.
But he is older now, and a
conversation in December with
a woman in tornado-strewn
Kentucky caused him to pivot.
She asked him whether she
could attend the funeral of a
man she believed she had not
done enough to save, Graham
said.
“I said, ‘I don’t know, but how
you sleeping?’” Graham said.
“Then I got the idea that people
needed to talk.”
Graham spent weeks there.
Buffalo was next.
In Uvalde, he has had a win-dow into the town’s ongoing
trauma. The uncle of a child who
called 911 from inside Robb
stopped by, Graham said. Teens
who fretted they would feel
shame telling future college
classmates where they were
from came.
One man sobbed that anger at
the police might force his son-
in-law, an officer, out of town —
and with him, the man’s daugh-
ter and grandchildren.
“My grandkids, he said —
they’re moving them away, and
they won’t even get to see the
healthy part of this town come
back,” Graham recalled.
McLaughlin, the mayor, said
he is concerned about victims’
families having long-term sup-
port and resources, even after allthe visitors have moved on. But
their departure will also reveal
the town’s true character.
“Then, you’ll see the side of
Uvalde again that we talk
about,” McLaughlin said.
“Neighbor will be there for
neighbor. They will be strong
and offer each other support.”
Graham does not doubt that.
Uvalde, he said, is more open
and close-knit than any place he
has visited.
“A ll I want to do is just leave it
a little better than I found it,”
Graham told Gilbert Limones, a
pastor who came with members
of his congregation to pray with
the cowboy in the post-sunset
dark.
One of the pastor’s compan-
ions gave Graham a cooler. Li-
mones offered Graham a place
to shower. Graham, who sleeps
in his truck most nights, headed
instead to a hotel room — one
that, a week after the shooting,
was finally open.BY KARIN BRULLIARDuvalde, tex. — The cowboy
drove 1,213 miles from his Ohio
farm and erected a blue tent and
sign asking, “NEED TALK?” on
an empty corner lot. The Dallas
artist painted a mural on tall
canvas set up across the street
from Robb Elementary School.
The parents of a mass shooting
victim flew down from Buffalo,
advising new members of the
terrible brotherhood created by
yet another rampage.
As this small town grieves for
19 children and two teachers
slain at school by a gunman, it
has also swelled, becoming a
pilgrimage site for mourners,
relief workers, therapists, prose-
lytizers and voyeurs. In a region
that typically grows busy with
summer vacationers cooling in
the Frio River or fall hunters
prowling the Hill Country, ho-
tels are now unseasonably full,
restaurants bustling.
There are hordes of media, of
course, with tents and cameras
and vans and bright lights. But
other outsiders came, too. Police
vehicles from other Te xas towns
— Cactus City, Irving, Amarillo
— cruise the streets, filling in for
a local force facing intense scru-
tiny over its delayed response to
the shooting. Whataburger em-
ployees from other store loca-
tions arrive each day so the
Uvalde outlet’s staff can take
time off. The Billy Graham Rap-
id Response bus, the American
Red Cross, Christian bikers, San
Antonio mariachi musicians
and Florida therapy dogs have
pitched up at makeshift memo-
rials.
The scene highlights an un-
usually American reality. Mass
shootings happen so often here
that their locations have become
a circuit of sorts, the kind of
place where regulars see famil-
iar faces, and lament over the
latest tragedy.
“These shootings are always
the same but always different,”
said Sandy Phillips, whose
daughter was killed in a mass
shooting in Aurora, Colo. in
2012, and who now travels with
her husband from one massacre
to another. Uvalde’s survivors,
she said, are “family now —
unfortunately, a family you nev-
er want to become a part of.”
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaugh-
lin, in an interview, described
visiting media as intrusive and
frustrating “to no end.” But he
called the counselors and spirit-
ual leaders who have descended
on the town a “blessing.”
“Not only will these families
need help ... you’ve got as many
citizens that are traumatized by
this,” McLaughlin said.
The cowboy from Ohio, David
Graham — no relation to Billy —
set up his minimalist “Cowboy
Cares” operation a half-mile
down Main Street from a memo-
rial in the town plaza. He had
just been in Buffalo, where 10
people were fatally shot at a
supermarket, and said he want-
ed to avoid the “circus” — the
surreal festival vibe that over-
lays the quiet tour visitors take
around piles of wilting bouquets
and crosses dedicated to each
victim.
Many there have an agenda,
Graham said. He wanted only to
offer an ear and had found
remarkable success: About 100
people a day had been pulling in,
he estimated.
Graham, 62, stands on the
corner in his white hat, giving
thumbs up and clapping at pass-
ing cars. He looks each visitor in
the eye and asks: “How are you
sleeping?” Rarely is the answer
well; tears often flow. On a
recent evening, Graham chatted
with a man who came to thank
the cowboy for his presence, and
who flipped off a Grapevine,
Te x., police car as it passed.
Next was an off-duty Uvalde
County sheriff’s deputy, Andrew
Davila, bearing two bottles of
water for Graham. “People are
seeking for why — why this
happened,” Davila, 47, told
Graham. “The one constant I’ve
come to realize is sometimes
people just do bad things.”
Karina Arango, 34, rolled up
in a Mini Cooper. She was defi-
nitely not sleeping well, she
said, and soon she was sobbing.
Her friend’s daughter was in the
ICU, gravely wounded by bul-
lets. Graham offered Kleenex.
“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m
so sorry,” Graham told her,
kneeling at her window. Arango
perked up when he told her that
he planned to stay at least
through the last funeral, then
mentioned she had just hosted
at her home a clown from Hous-
ton who couldn’t find a hotel
room. “It was amazing having
her,” she said, smiling.
Phillips and her husband,
Uvalde becomes another stop on a grim American circuit
PHOTOS BY SARAH L. VOISIN/THE WASHINGTON POST
Pastor Gilbert Limones of the El Shaddai Uvalde church lays hands on David Graham and prays for him. The church offered Graham a place to shower, gave him a cooler
and promised to check on him while he served Uvalde in the wake of the shooting. “All I want to do is just leave it a little better than I found it,” he told Limones.ABOVE LEFT: Andres Vielma
Jr. and Graham embrace after a
long conversation. Vielma is
one of about 100 people a day
who Graham says have been
coming by his Cowboy Cares
operation, which he set up in a
blue tent on an empty lot a
half-mile from the memorial
i n Uvalde’s town square to
avoid the “circus” of outsiders
that streamed into town.
ABOVE RIGHT: G raham
brought flashlights to give to
the children in town. Here,
he’s showing 3-year-old Trae
Vielma — Andres Vielma’s
s on — how to use one.
BELOW: Graham folds an
American flag before he goes
to sleep in his truck. After
driving more than 1,
miles from his Ohio farm,
Graham spent most of the first
week after the shooting
sleeping in his truck because
the hotels in town were
booked.