by Jonas Beiler
Just after midnight everything would have been dark and quiet as usual. The only difference I recall from that night was that the air felt unseasonably warm for October. Insects chirped. Walking by a barn, you may have heard the rustling of cattle or seen the glowing eyes of a tabby cat on the prowl for field mice. Like the dozens of villages settled on other crossroads in the valley, Nickel Mines was as bucolic and peaceful a place as you could find in America.
Thirty-two-year-old Charles Roberts made his way back from the last pickup of the day. It was just after midnight—the stars were sharp in the dark sky that night. He pulled his milk truck into his employer’s parking lot and began emptying its contents. He was determined to do what he had planned. The letters were already written. The equipment was already stored away in the shed beside his house. The list that was tucked away in his glove compartment itemized the things he still needed to buy in the morning before he carried out his plan.
I did not know Charles Roberts personally, but I know his friends called him Charlie. Born December 7, 1973, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, Charles Carl Roberts IV’s childhood apparently was as normal and unremarkable as that of any other youngster who grew up in the area. His father was a policeman and his mother homeschooled him, which was not all that unusual in this region. They lived in the country, surrounded by fields and forests. There would seem to be nothing out of the ordinary in his youth that could explain his actions of October 2, 2006.
Charles became interested in carpentry while his parents were building a house, and eventually got a job working on a framing crew, putting together the bare-bones skeletons of homes. In 1996 he quit construction for a less seasonal job: installing residential garage doors.
At the age of twenty-two Charles got engaged, and his fiancée finished out high school in the midst of preparations for a November wedding. By the end of 1996 everything in his life was looking positive—he was married and in love, both he and his wife had steady work, they had purchased a town house, and they were expecting their first child. Charles then turned his attention to becoming a truck driver—his in-laws had a trucking company, and he began practicing with his father-in-law in hopes of getting the Class A license required for driving tractor trailers.
But then came a turning point in Charlie’s life. On a cold day in November his daughter was born prematurely and died twenty minutes after birth. He took some time off work, and everyone could tell that he was devastated. The infant’s heart-shaped gravestone was etched with the image of a lamb along with the following inscription:
ELISE VICTORIA
pledged to God
daughter of
Charles and Marie
born and died
November 14, 1997
In 1999 Charles reached his goal of becoming a truck driver and was hired by his in-laws’ company. The lives of those milktruck drivers can at times be lonely. The nighttime shifts allow for very little interaction with anyone else, and for many of the drivers the circuit can sometimes be one constant battle to keep their eyes open. Pulling up to a milk tank, connecting the truck, filling up, driving off ... and repeat, time and time again, until the wee hours of the morning.
Before the Amish had access to telephones, milk-truck drivers would often be the ones to pass important information from one farm to another: a recent birth or death, or important happenings within the community. Even though the Amish get by without modern conveniences, they still sell their milk the same way a dairy farmer would, with large tankers coming in to haul away their product.
In more recent years the milk-truck drivers have probably not been quite as known for being the conveyors of news they once were, yet they often will still spend time chatting with the farmers, and many of the Amish get to know their milk-truck drivers very well. Charles, however, had a reputation for keeping to himself.
Early the morning of October 2, Charles, at the end of a typically long shift, emptied his tank—up to fifty thousand pounds of raw milk. As I reflect on the event that would change the lives in my community forever, I can’t help but wonder if he knew this would be his last milk delivery.
One of his fellow milkmen spoke through the morning’s darkness.
“See you later, Charlie.”
“Yeah, I’ll see ya.”
Charles didn’t make any move to hang around and talk. The coworker wasn’t surprised, though, and turned back to complete his own tasks—that was Charlie. During the weeks leading up to the shooting, people who knew him say he became more outgoing and talkative, something the police explained often happens after someone has made a final decision to go through with a crime. But in those last days he had become more withdrawn again, keeping to himself, rarely talking.
Charles left the dairy and drove through the dark night to the Nickel Mine Auction, where he dropped off the milk truck and drove his own vehicle home, a drive that took only a few minutes. When Charles slid into bed that morning, around 3 a.m., he fell asleep quickly. His wife, used to the late-night routines of her husband, barely stirred.
Charles, we know from those who were close to him, was not a contented man, and at the heart of his burning discontent was the death of his daughter, Elise Victoria, more than ten years before. The despair he carried from the day he bore her small coffin from Georgetown United Methodist Church to the cemetery shaped his life forever. Something precious had been taken from him, and the initial anger that often comes with tragedy consumed him. Was he about to try to even the score? We will never know, yet there in his house, early that morning, he slept, as did many others whose lives would change that day. Firemen slept peacefully, unaware that it might be the last peaceful night’s sleep they would have for years. Ambulance drivers and volunteer workers rested, less than twenty-four hours away from a horrifying scene that would plague their minds indefinitely. Amish families slept. Even if they had bad dreams, nothing could compare to the nightmare they would face when the sun rose.3
Nickel Mines Schoolhouse nestled in a peaceful pasture
CHAPTER THREE
Converging on an Amish School
SOMETIMES IT IS difficult for us, in this modern era, to understand how much noise and static we live with—the constant sound of traffic, the radio playing, the voices on the television shouting at us from some corner of the house, MP3 players and advertisements bombarding our senses. Our cell phones rarely leave us, and at any time their ringing steals us from whatever moment we are in.
Contrast this with the typical Amish household. There are no phones in the house. The few families who have decided to have a phone build what I call “phone shanties”—outhouselike sheds halfway up the drive to keep this modern device out of their homes. There are no electrical appliances in the house, so no constantly humming air conditioner or tumbling dryer or beeping microwave. No televisions or radios, of course. The sounds you hear inside an Amish home all have a pleasantness about them: a breeze blowing through open windows, songbirds singing in the trees, cows bellowing as they line up to enter the milk parlor, and horses stomping their steel shoes impatiently on the concrete barn floor. Perhaps most pleasant of all is the sound of children’s voices, whether at play or working alongside their parents.
Visitors to Lancaster County always ask us questions about the Amish, the most prevalent being: How do they make it financially? What in the world do kids do without video games or television? The Amish life of simplicity should never be confused with poverty or boredom. While it is true that the Amish generally do not attend school much past the eighth grade and therefore do not pursue high-paying careers, they are industrious and remarkably wise about money. They learn early on to be resourceful with their hands, excelling at construction and other skilled work such as furniture making and, of course, farming. Amish women are legendary for their quilts and other handcrafted items and also sell their delicious baked goods and home-grown fruits and vegetables. Children learn these skills from their parents and often join in on the work at an early
age. It’s not unusual for all family members over the age of fourteen to be earning money with their skills, but what is unusual is their discipline in saving the money they earn. Coupled with the fact that they don’t have utility bills, car payments, or credit card debt, it’s easy to understand why many Amish families are actually quite welloff financially.
When it comes to Amish kids living without television, all you would need to do is spend a day in an Amish home and you’d have your answer: Amish kids seem to be not only content with their simpler lives, they actually appear to have more fun than their English counterparts. Part of this has to do with how the Amish live in general. The mornings begin before the sun comes up and are filled with chores: tending to the animals and the garden and preparing the house for the day. Everyone helps in this process, and everyone, even the children, seem to understand their importance in maintaining a well-run household. “Work” for these Amish children consists of climbing up into hay mows, bottle-feeding baby sheep and calves, or rolling out pie dough.
During the day, the younger children head off to school, often meeting up with friends on the network of paths leading to the schoolhouse. The Amish schools, when compared with ours, present a stark alternative that helps explain why Amish kids tend to enjoy school more than typical American students. Our schools are sprawling campuses to which students are shipped from miles away, often resulting in a half-hour ride on a noisy, often unruly bus. Public schools must work hard in order to create a community connection among the students, since most of them live so far apart from one another. The teachers are often strangers to the area, in many cases living in towns or cities far away from the school.
Contrast that with Amish schools, normally one-room buildings with a school bell, a few outhouses, maybe a water pump, and a three-rail fence around the one-acre property. There are no televisions or computers. Usually, the total number of students in the school is somewhere between fifteen and thirty, all of them living within walking distance of the school and one another. Every fall, winter, and spring I will see these children making the trek to their school, some riding small scooters on the roads, others choosing to cross the fields, the most direct route. Because they walk to school, the Amish keep the walking distance down to a mile or two by building several schools in a relatively small area and placing them close to clusters of Amish farms and homes.
Unlike public school students, Amish kids never have to worry about keeping up with current fashions. The boys wear straw hats with black bands, black trousers, and solid-colored shirts with black suspenders. The girls wear long, plain dresses, their hair up in a tight bun, covered with a handkerchief or a covering. In the summertime, the children might run barefoot to school, even through the fields. You will usually find them traveling in family units, brothers and sisters walking together, the older ones helping the younger ones along. There’s no need to get to know one another on the first day of school, since everyone already knows everyone else.
Their teachers are generally young—sometimes barely out of their teens—and largely self-taught beyond their own eighth-grade schooling, but in terms of the basics of reading, math, history, and science, the Amish are very well educated. Also, the Amish may be the world’s greatest users of public libraries. When we built the Family Center of Gap, we included space for a branch of the area’s public library because we knew what a treasured resource it was to the Amish. Typically, an Amish mom will visit the library with her children, carrying a large basket. When they leave, there could be as many as twenty books in the basket, and in less than a week the family will be back, repeating the process. And it’s not just children’s books that they check out. Although their formal education ends at the eighth grade, many Amish are lifelong learners.
While the younger children are in school, the older children either work alongside their parents to help them earn a living or get jobs of their own, such as working on an Amish construction crew. Even the grandparents pitch in to do what they can to help out. At home, the families speak mostly Pennsylvania Dutch, a German dialect, but they also learn English at an early age.
The presence of the older generation is not simply endured—it is appreciated, nurtured, and cherished. You will see many an Amish farmhouse with what looks like multiple additions built on to the side of the house—these are built by the parents for their own parents to live in. They know that someday their parents will pass on, and then they will move in to the addition and their children will take over the house.
The Amish pay frequent visits to relatives or friends who live close by. They walk or pack everyone into the horse and buggy, and a trip that takes us ten minutes might take them an hour. Imagine traveling with our families at that kind of pace, without the interruption of cell phones or the noise of radios or DVD players.
The Amish tend to work around the natural hours of sunlight. The evenings are usually quiet affairs, with dinner together as a family, then peaceful time spent reading or quilting. If the children aren’t reading, they’re either playing table games like Monopoly or Rook or outside playing Bag Tag or Prisoner’s Base. Perhaps one more round of chores needs to be done, and then the day is over.
FOR THE Miller family, the morning of October 2 began like any other morning in Nickel Mines. Held in their shared oak bed like two caterpillars squeezed into a single cocoon, sisters Lena and Mary Liz Miller slept the peaceful sleep of innocence. Their breathing came and went, soft and deep, their blue eyes lightly closed. Their dolls lay quietly in their own beds, tightly tucked in. The handmade quilt covering the sisters rose and fell in a gentle rhythm, its tight stitches evidence of an accomplished quilter.
Sometimes, if they moved close together while they slept, the difference in their hair color became more evident: eight-year-old Mary Liz’s hair was dark, while seven-year-old Lena’s was a lighter shade of brown. Even for sisters, they were close: they shared a room, shared a bed, and spent nearly every waking moment together. Only a year apart in age, they could not remember a moment in their lives when the other wasn’t present.
As the sun was rising—not yet showing itself but lighting the sky from a dark black to a deep plum and finally to a whitish blue—the house stirred. Mary Liz and Lena, their little sister, and their two little brothers could all sense the day approaching their farmhouse and the surrounding barns. There were five children in that house, each one eight years of age or younger: a cozy, happy home.
Soon the sisters were awake and yawning, putting on their dresses, rubbing their eyes. The morning went quickly as the children helped with chores around the house, ate their breakfast, and prepared for school. Before the girls knew it they were out the door, carrying their brand-new lunch boxes, and passing a neighbor’s house. Normally this neighbor would see the girls on their way to school, sometimes calling out a hello as they passed, but on that morning the neighbor didn’t look outside. The girls’ small feet passed by, unnoticed.
Across the way, Rachel Ann Stoltzfus woke up. Her four older brothers, two younger brothers, and one younger sister were busy with their morning chores. A fourth grader, she quickly dressed for school, ate breakfast, helped with the dishes, then rushed out the door with her three school-age brothers, Rachel holding tight to her purple Igloo lunch box. On that particular morning, her parents would later recall, there were no kisses good-bye.
Two more girls, the only sisters in a family with six brothers, also prepared to leave for school: Sarah Ann and Anna Mae Stoltzfus (although many Amish share the same last name, it does not necessarily mean they are related). Both girls were tall for their age, loved to jump on the trampoline in their yard, and were hard workers. They each had a small bowl on their dresser where they would leave lighthearted notes for each other, jokes, or silly things they thought to write.
Eight-year-old Sarah Ann loved to read, something that opened up a whole new world for her, and she had her nose in a book as often as possible considering the busy atmosphere of the house. Twelve-year-
old Anna Mae was the numbers girl and worked the cash register for her parents at their farmer’s market stand. Both girls loved their roles in the family, so much so, in fact, that on that morning, Anna Mae didn’t want to leave until she had finished the laundry. In spite of her protests, the rest of the family bustled her out the door. They said they would finish it for her—she mustn’t be late.
So she hurried off, catching up with her sister, brothers, and other classmates walking to school. Already the sun felt rather warm for an October day, and the air smelled more of summer fields than it did of falling autumn leaves.
While most Amish kids looked forward to school, one young girl in another home did not. For some reason, Naomi Rose Ebersole always hated leaving her family to go to school. On that morning, when it came time for her to walk to school, she fought back tears as she often did, her big, dark eyes filling to the brim. Her parents consoled her, reminding her that once she got to school the day would go by quickly. The second grade couldn’t wait, and soon Naomi found herself walking to school through a small strip of trees with two of her brothers. She had three other brothers who had since completed their schooling. Soon she could see the school—her friends would be there waiting for her. She knew that once the lessons started the time would pass quickly, just as her parents had told her, and then she could return home, shout to her mother that she was back, and maybe even convince one of her brothers to play dolls, as they occasionally did to humor her. After all, she was the only little girl in the family.
Naomi was often heard humming her new favorite hymn:
My heavenly home is bright and fair
I feel like traveling on
