FAIRFIELD/NEWTOWN, Conn (Reuters) – One boy was buried in his hero’s football jersey in a small white coffin. Balloons and a teddy bear welcomed mourners to the funeral of his first grade schoolmate.
The two funerals yesterday ushered in what will be a week of memorial services and burials for the 20 children and six adults massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
Mourners packed into the funeral for the youngest victim, Noah Pozner, age 6.
“Every time I told Noah, ‘I love you,’ he always answered, ‘Not as much as I love you,’“ his mother, Veronique Pozner, told mourners at his funeral, recalled Rabbi Edgar Gluck after the burial service.
The deaths of so many children, all ages 6 and 7, sparked new talk of gun control in Washington, long reluctant to take on the highly charged issue, with US President Barack Obama meeting key advisers and one pro-gun senator calling on the nation’s gun lobby to rethink its position.
The shooting sent waves of anxiety across the country on the first school day since a 20-year-old gunman opened fire on the students and teachers in the close-knit community, located 80 miles northeast of New York City, last week.
Lockdowns were declared at schools in nearby Connecticut and New York towns on fears of danger that turned out to be unfounded. In southern California, Indiana, Tennessee and Ohio, authorities arrested men on Sunday for making threats against schools.
Newtown’s schools remained closed after a weekend of mourning that followed Adam Lanza’s shooting spree on Friday that claimed 28 lives, including his mother’s and his own.
At the funeral for Jack Pinto, also 6, in Newtown, about a half dozen children wearing a wrestling’s club gold medals took off the awards and gave them to their teammate’s parents. A New York Giants fan, Jack was dressed in a red-and-white jersey with receiver Victor Cruz’s number 80 as he lay in an open white casket.
“Jack was an incredibly loving and vivacious young boy, appreciated by all who knew him for his lively and giving spirit and steely determination,” his parents, Dean and Tricia Pinto, and brother said in his obituary in the Newtown Bee newspaper.
In Fairfield, a teddy bear and bouquet of white flowers lay at the base of an oak tree outside the Jewish service for Pozner, whose twin sister, Arielle, escaped unhurt.
“Noah was an impish, larger-than-life little boy,” his parents and four siblings said in an obituary, also in the Bee. “Everything he did conveyed action and energy through love. He was the light of our family, a little soul devoid of spite.” A day after meeting with families of victims and addressing a shocked nation from Newtown, Obama yesterday held a White House meeting with Vice President Joe Biden and three Cabinet members to discuss ways to respond.
An administration spokesman said Obama’s plan for action to curb violence includes gun control “but is far from all of it.” He declined to offer specific details.
Gun control is a politically charged topic in the United States, with the powerful National Rifle Association mustering strong resistance to tighter rules on gun ownership.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg lashed out at fellow politicians for their reluctance to take on the gun lobby.
“Somehow or other, we’ve come to think that getting re-elected is more important than saving lives, that political power is more important than saving lives,” he said in an angry, emotional press conference at New York City Hall. “Enough.”
A growing number of US lawmakers called for a look at curbing assault weapons like the one used in the massacre. The ban on the weapons expired in 2004.
