Glorious Sadness: Faith~Love~Hope Trumps School Attack

On Friday, February 2, 2001, a fifty-five-year-old man entered the North Hopewell-Winterstown Elementary School wielding a two-foot-long machete and randomly attacked twenty-three kindergarten children, their teacher, a third-grade teacher, and the school principal, Norina Bentzel. Although Norina and some others sustained serious injuries, no one was killed.
Every day starts out like a "normal" day until something out of the ordinary happens. Most of our days are routinely oriented, but not for us on February 2, 2001. When crisis happened, lives changed and a "new normal" began.
Norina and her teachers courageously stopped the intruder. However, with tragedy comes cost. Children and adults were scarred physically, cognitively, emotionally, and spiritually that day. Lifelong healing began in uncharted territory.
As the principal, and the one who was the most severely injured in this elementary school attack, Norina brings important insight and observations about leadership, lessons learned in school tragedy, and details the supportive needs in times of crisis. Walking through loss can be overwhelming, but through determination and resilience, it can be overpowered.
Allow her memoir of this event, that altered the lives of her students, parents, staff, and herself, to speak to you in unimaginable ways. Although it is personal to each individual, there are many avenues that one can take to heal from tragedy and loss. Norina's journey included music. She discovered that at those harrowing moments when words failed her, music spoke volumes. Learn more about her road from recovery to resiliency as you explore her thoughts and interpret her healing notes. Discover how she, her staff, and their parents helped the school children that day and onward.
Know that through tragedy and crisis the best and worst in people surfaces, sometimes in very sad ways and at other times in glorious ways. As an educator, Norina desires that her memoir will help to teach others how to navigate through the ongoing tragedies that life throws at us.