Amish thankful for outpouring of support

After last week’s schoolhouse shooting in Pennsylvania, impromptu memorial at Germantown market keeps growing

Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Naomi Brookner⁄The Gazette Flowers, cards and other remembrances began appearing outside the Lancaster County Dutch Market in Germantown Wednesday, before Amish workers arrived to open Thursday morning. The shopkeepers say the memorial is a source of comfort. Click here to enlarge this photo Donna Gross (above) adds abouquet of flowers to a growing memorial outside the Lancaster County Dutch Market on Wisteria Drive.

‘‘It’s just awful isn’t it?” she wondered aloud.

A memorial for the 10 Amish girls who were shot in their Pennsylvania schoolhouse last week grew by the hour in front of the Lancaster County Dutch Market on Wisteria Drive into a silent gesture of support in a time of deep mourning.

Five of the girls were killed after being taken hostage by a milkman who also killed himself in a one-room schoolhouse in the tiny hamlet of Nickel Mines on Oct. 2.

The Amish worker in Germantown gathered her dress and apron and stooped to read a message left among the bouquets: ‘‘To our Amish neighbors,” it read. ‘‘We are so very sorry for the loss of your little angels. May you find peace.”

Before her lay five candles and five ceramic angels that were left on the sidewalk.

‘‘I guess we’re all here to take care of one another,” she said as she turned and went back into the market.

The flowers appeared at the market before dawn on Thursday, the first business day after the shootings. They were there by the time the trucks pulled up and unloaded fresh foods and handmade wares.

‘‘It made me feel good when I saw it,” said market operator Mervin Lapp, who attended two of the dead girls’ funerals on Thursday. ‘‘It showed us right away that we’ve been getting a lot of support.”

Germantown residents have visited the market for 10 years to savor the sweet breads, pretzels and fresh meats it offers. But last week they came to lay stuffed bears and messages on the sidewalk in front of the store.

‘‘It’s just so amazing. On Thursday, there were a few flowers here, but it just kept growing,” said one of the market workers Friday, as if it was by miracle that the makeshift memorial appeared more than 125 miles from home.

But it was no miracle. Donna Gross, of nearby Meadows at Gunners Lake, said customers started leaving mementos for the Amish workers sometime Wednesday.

‘‘We wanted to make sure when they came in Thursday morning that they knew that we had not forgotten them,” said Gross, who has visited the market twice a week for the past five years.

The outpouring prompted the shopkeepers to post this message in the window:

‘‘We feel compelled to express our gratitude and appreciation to our customers for your prayers, charities, flowers, cards, etc. And let us not forget the gunman’s bereaved widow and her three innocent children.”

For Lapp, who lives in Nickel Mines and helped found the Germantown market, the work at the store provided a needed release. Lapp’s son attends school just one mile away from the site of the last week’s shooting.

‘‘I was ready to do something again, to think of something else,” he said, standing in his furniture shop in the corner of the market. ‘‘You’ve got to start somewhere.”

His father, Chris Lapp, said the horror of what had happened occupied most of their hours.

‘‘It’s still all we’re thinking about,” he said.

Inside the market on Friday, though, it was business as usual. Girls in high school cheerleading uniforms sneaked smells at candy and women lamented at the length of the line at the meat counter.

So while the flowers and candles left in support cannot heal wounds, the sentiments behind them, in time and number, are more than the Amish who work here expected.

‘‘A lot of people express sympathies,” Mervin Lapp said before taking a furniture order. ‘‘They don’t say anything, they just smile, and that’s enough.”