OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — It’s been one week since the deadly shootings at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom. People in the area and members of the Jewish faith in the metro are trying to move past the attack and start the painful process of healing.
It’s a journey JCC members say will take more than a week of healing.
“It was a difficult week and it was weird to come back home and hear about all of the events and things that happened right here in the place we’re used to coming to every day,” said eighteen-year-old high school senior Jonathan Bush.
Bush wasn’t at the JCC last Sunday when police say Frazier Cross, Jr. opened fire in the parking lot, killing Dr. William Corporon and his grandson Reat Underwood, and later killing Terri LaManno at Village Shalom. Bush was in Omaha, visiting with other youth who are members of the same Jewish youth group. From there, they watched the news of the attack unfold through the headlines.
“We heard all our friends back here at our chapter were watching it on the news,” he said.
Bush has spent many hours of his youth at the JCC and was there Sunday for board elections.
“We have meetings here almost every Sunday. Come up here and play basketball, hang out, do business,” he said.
Sherry Worth has two children who participate in many activities at the JCC. She let her son drive alone Sunday to the center, for the first time since the shooting.
“You drive up and you’re full of emotion, but you just have to get back to business and do what you have to do. I let him drive solo because I knew that it would be safe and something he needed to do and something I needed to let him do,” said Worth.
Another mother, Sheryl Kaplan, struggled deeply this week.
“It has been very emotional for me. I think the kids did a beautiful job with their walk the other night, and I felt that was very healing for a lot of people,” Kaplan said.
Kaplan described returning to what she calls a “new normal.”
“It’s amazing that the people of all faiths come together and it just reaffirms that there is more good in this world than bad,” she said.
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