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Standing on the threshold of grief, documenting the bedrooms of kids killed in school shootings
I never wanted to be this kind of reporter, knocking on the door of someone who lost a child in a school shooting. And yet there I stood, knocking, nonetheless.
I found myself here, standing on the threshold of grief across the country, after years of pent-up frustration. By 2018, America’s school shooting epidemic had taken a toll on me. There were so many that the news coverage felt like a treadmill. It seemed to me the country had grown numb and lost its empathy for the victims and the families. I wanted to do something.
For help, I reached out to Lou Bopp, one of the best still photographers in the country. But he said he had never faced a challenge quite like this: “to take a portrait of a person who’s not there.”
On March 27, 2023, Chad and Jada Scruggs lost their daughter, Hallie, in the Covenant School shooting in Nashville. She was 9 years old, the youngest of four, and their only daughter.
Looking back at photos of Hallie, Chad recalled how she loved sports and had “more stitches than any of her brothers.”
“It was just a lot of fun having a daughter,” Jada said.
“We had a chance to have her for 9 and a half years, and that was far better than not having her at all,” Chad said.
But their goodbye isn’t quite complete. They’re still living with her bedroom.
Over the past six years, eight families from five school shootings invited us into these sacred spaces, allowing Americans to see what it’s like to live with an empty child’s bedroom.
We traveled to Uvalde, Texas, where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School, including 9-year-old Jackie Cazares.
Jackie’s parents Javier and Gloria say people are always telling them that they can’t imagine what they’re going through. But they say we need to imagine, and that’s why they invited us in.
“It just makes everything more real for the public, for the world,” Gloria said. “Her room completely just speaks of who she was.”
In Jackie’s room, we saw the chocolate she saved for a day that never came, evidence of the dream vacation she never got to take, and the pajamas she never wore again.
It struck us how many of the rooms remained virtually untouched, years after the shooting.
Frank and Nancy Blackwell lost their 14-year-old son Dominic in the Saugus High School tragedy near Los Angeles. That was 2019, but inside his room, it felt like it was yesterday.
“We just decided to keep everything as it was from when he last went to school that day,” Frank said. “He didn’t prepare his room to be photographed. He didn’t put away his stuffed animals because he was worried about who might see it. He woke up, he got dressed, and he left to go to school. And he thought he was coming back. And we all expected him to come back.”
So many rooms wait for a child that will never return.
Charlotte Bacon was murdered in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012, six weeks after Halloween. Her room holds the last library book the 6-year-old checked out, now 12 years overdue.
Luke Hoyer, 15, was killed in Parkland, Florida, on Valentine’s Day in 2018. When we visited his home, his bed was just as he left it.
Alyssa Alhadeff, 14, was also killed in the Parkland shooting. The whirlwind that was her room had fallen still.
Carmen Schentrup was yet another Parkland victim. The watch she got for her 16th birthday still ticks, but the motivational sayings that filled her room resonate no more.
The decision to either keep a room as it was or pack it up and repurpose it tortures many parents.
Bryan and Cindy Muhlberger lost their 15-year-old daughter, Gracie, in the Saugus shooting. They told us they often talk about what to do with her room.
“Because when I do go in there, I feel her presence,” Cindy told us.
Bryan wondered, “And so when that time comes that the room is not there, does she go away?”
I didn’t realize what an albatross the rooms are for some families.
“I will just say I have a pretty confusing relationship with [Hallie’s] room now,” Chad said. It’s extremely painful, but there’s a lot of moments where you want to be sad — because the sadness is a part of connecting with her.”
Hallie’s room also brings them smiles, too, Chad and Jada told us as they showed us a kitty cat hoodie that Hallie wore all the time.
The rooms really are a rainbow of emotion, all at once tender as a lullaby and shocking as a crime scene. Clues gather dust, leading us past all the places these kids had been up until that very moment when everything stopped so suddenly that there wasn’t even time to close the lid on the toothpaste tube.
In the end, we took more than 10,000 photographs. These parents hope that at least one of these pictures will stick with you, that you will forever carry a piece of their pain and use that heartache to stem the tide of all these empty rooms.
They don’t play “Hail to the Chief” when President Bill Clinton shows up anymore, but there is an equally welcome sound he still hears all the time. “We love you!” shouts one bystander in Harlem.
Here, a walk through the streets with Clinton feels a lot like a victory lap. The former president set up shop here shortly after he left office. Back then, he was only 54, newly unemployed, but determined to use his influence, contacts and know-how to make a difference as a private citizen.
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He even said so in his final address to the nation: “In the years ahead, I will never hold a position higher or a covenant more sacred than that of President of the United States. But there is no title I will wear more proudly than that of citizen.”
In the 24 years since he made that speech, Citizen Clinton has accomplished enough to fill several lifetimes – and the pages of a new book: “Citizen: My Life After the White House” (to be published Tuesday by Knopf).
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Asked what he was most proud of that he’d done in your time out of the White House, Clinton replied, “I think the thing I’m most proud of is that I proved that you can make a big difference as a private citizen.”
By any measure, he’s done that. Through his Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, which partners business leaders with nonprofits, he’s helped fund projects worldwide – to name a few, a program to help combat HIV/AIDS in South Africa, and a massive clean water project in Rwanda. Closer to home, his foundation helped with everything from the energy-saving retrofit of the Empire State Building in New York, to fighting drug overdoses in the heartland, to an upgrade of street lights in Los Angeles. They also helped fund construction jobs to rebuild crumbling infrastructure.
“We raised $16 billion from union pension funds to put people to work,” he said. “It was the biggest in the country at the time. That’s what I’m proud of, ’cause I think people are happy when they do things that actually make things better.”
The president also hit the road for the Harris-Walz ticket in the final weeks of the campaign, and says he was disappointed, but not entirely surprised, by the result.
I asked, “Do you think part of the issue is that America is just not ready for a female president?”
“Maybe,” Clinton replied. “I think in some ways we’ve moved to the right as a reaction to all the turmoil. And I think if Hillary had been nominated in 2008, she would’ve walked in, just like Obama did.”
“Has the country changed?”
“Well, I think all these cultural battles that we’re fighting make it harder in some ways for a woman to run.”
“So, you think it has more to do with party than gender?”
“No,” he said. “Although I think it would probably be easier for a conservative Republican woman to win.”
“Than a Democrat woman?”
“Uh-huh. Because, I mean, that’s what Maggie Thatcher did,” said Clinton. “But I still think we’ll have a female president pretty soon.”
“How soon? Within your lifetime?”
“Oh yeah. Well, I don’t know how long I’m gonna live. You’re askin’ an old man that question!” he laughed. “I hope I’m around for the next time. But now it’s President Trump’s turn in the barrel. It depends on what he does and how it plays.”
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We spoke this past week as the president-elect was in the process of naming his new cabinet, shaking up Washington, D.C., and beyond.
I asked, “Are the guardrails off?”
“Well, there’s no obvious guardrail,” Clinton replied. “The Senate’s shown some indigestion about some of these suggested appointments. We’ll see what happens there. You know, somewhere along the way, [Trump will] have to think about whether, at this chapter of his life, he still thinks the most important thing is to have unquestionable domination, ’cause that’s not what a democracy is about.”
“So you’re saying President Trump might have a change of heart?”
“He might. I was raised in the Baptist Church. I believe in deathbed conversions! I think you can’t give it up,” Clinton said. “But I think the rest of us just have to be diligent, watch the signs, and be willing to stand up for what we think is right, even if they take a piece outta our hide.”
In his book, the president writes candidly about his health issues, including his battle with weight. But he couldn’t resist stopping into the famed soul food restaurant Sylvia’s, if only for a cup of coffee.
I asked, “If you were eating here, what would you get?”
“In the middle of the afternoon? I would get some piece of pie.”
“I know you talk about this in your book. You have to watch your diet a little bit now?”
“A lot,” Clinton said. “It’s unbelievable how low your metabolism gets.”
If he’s candid about his health, he’s just as open about past controversies. Clinton writes about Monica Lewinsky, applauding her recent work on bullying.
Why make a point of doing that? He said, “Because I thought I needed to say something about it, and I wanted to be as helpful as I could to let her turn the page. I think she should be given a chance to build a life that is about her and the future, and not, you know, being whiplashed into an old story.”
So, while he’s mindful of the past, Bill Clinton keeps moving forward, making connections big and small, still trying – and often succeeding – in his bid to change the world.
“I don’t mind it when people jump on me; I just talk to ’em,” he said. “And I don’t turn ’em all. You don’t have to turn everybody; you just got to get enough.
“We just all need to loosen up and get back in the game. … There’s one other thing, and I say this in the book many times: We all keep score. You’ve been doing this for a long time. You’re keeping score in your mind about this interview compared to 15 others you’ve done. And I think the way I keep score is: Are people better off when you quit than when you started? Do children have a brighter future? And are we coming together instead of being torn apart? So, for me, it’s enough if I can answer yes to those three things.
“I know there are no permanent victories or defeats in politics,” said Clinton. “And I have no interest in being an armchair quarterback except to help my team perform better. And I think they have enormous talent. So, I wish ’em all well, and I’ll try to help. But meanwhile, I’m gonna just suit up and do what I’m doing.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Citizen: My Life After the White House” by Bill Clinton
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Story produced by John D’Amelio. Editor: Ed Givnish.
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