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Massacre in Uvalde, Texas. AP Photo
Nancy and Art Sutton have been taking pictures of children from every Uvalde school for twenty-eight years. Portraits of the 19 murdered childrenin the massacre last Tuesday are now on the counter of their store, ready for their families to pick them up.
“I just want to bless them with photos,” Nancy Sutton told Efe in the store She shares with her husband in this town in South Texas (USA), decorated with photos of students in caps and gowns, smiling families and also a young man pretending to shoot a firearm.
After the shooting at Robb Elementary School, the marriagehe began to look for the photos he had taken. The victims of the shooting at the beginning of each school year and contacted their families so that they “choose the one they like best”.
” we can develop those photos in large size, so they can put them at funerals, or hang them forever in their homes”, explains the co-owner of the store “Uvalde Photo”.
PHOTOS OF THE WHOLE CLASS
While showing Efe the photos of the 19 children and another of the entire class with the two teachers who lost their lives, Irma García and Eva Mireles, the photographer remembers how happy they were The children are usually there when she and her husband go to take class photos at the beginning of the school year.
“They are happy to have their photos taken, very excited. Probably because it means they miss some of the classes, but it’s a fun time for them,” emphasizes Nancy.
The 59-year-old photographer has been capturing these moments for so long that she’s even taken class portraits of “the parents and children.” grandparents” Some of the children who are now starting to attend the city’s schools.
“It’s a job where you can’t be sad because you have to make people smile,” he says .
Some time ago, when she was taking photos at the same school where the shooting took place, there was a security alert and entrances and exits to the center were temporarily blocked, and Nancy remembers that the children ” they behaved very well.”
THE IMPULSE TO DO SOMETHING
Tuesday’s tragedy has hit this majority-Hispanic town of less than 16,000 inhabitants hard. andmany businesses are turning to help the families of the victims.
Two funeral homes in the area have offered to organize funeral services at no cost, no longer Appointments remain to donate blood for the 17 wounded, there is free food in the central square, and a local bank has established a fund to channel donations to families.
On Tuesday, when the authorities issued the alert of that there was a shooter in a school, they started“longest twenty minutes” of the life of Ignacio Mata, who has two children in a local institute and took It took a while to verify that the attack was taking place in another center.
“It has been very hard. We started hearing sirens around 11:20 or 11:30 and they didn’t stop until 4:30 in the afternoon. I went to bed still listening to sirens in my head,” he recalls in an interview with Efe.
When he woke up, he started He thought about how he could help families and in about 30 minutes he designed one. a logo with the slogan “Uvalde Strong” (“Uvalde fuerte”), the same one that is now painted on almost every storefront and that seeks to unite the community after the tragedy.
“They joke with me at the store that I’m not good at a lot of things, but design and softball are two of the only things I know. What to do,” says humbly Mata, who is co-owner of the t-shirt printing business Genesis Screenprinting, in downtown Uvalde.
T-SHIRTS FOR FUNDRAISING
The logo that designed Mata is now printed on hundreds of t-shirts scattered around his store, which he has opened on Saturdays to deal with the huge demand for it. receiving:has already sold at least 350 in less than three daysand has orders from Mexico or states as far away as Minnesota.
“They cost $20, 15 of which goes to the family fund ( which has been established by the local First State Bank),” explains Mata.
The color of the school attacked on Tuesday is maroon, but it is more expensive to buy t-shirts in that shade, so that, in order to “donate more money” in the background, Mata has opted for a light gray background for the moment.
On it he prints his logo in cherry color with a white border: the “U” of Uvalde is adorned with a coyote, the animal that represented the Robb school, and instead of the “O” from “Strong” there is a silhouette of the state of Texas, below a 21 in tribute to the victims, from which angel wings and a halo come out.
Many churches in the area have contacted Mata to wear their jerseys at their vigils, and several baseball teams have asked him to wear them to games they have this weekend outside of Uvalde.
Also Seven families of the victims have commissioned him, and Mata has found a benefactor so that those relatives don’t have to pay anything to receive the t-shirts.
“My partner (at the store) told me that (what we raised) was not going to be enough (…). But it’s not about big donations, it’s about all of us contributing a little”, he stressed.