A Little Girl and a Snowdrops

You might have heard of Dunblane, Scotland as it houses a magnificent medieval cathedral and the 17th century Leighton Library. It was also the hometown of Sophie North - a 5 year old girl, one of sixteen plus their teacher, who fell victim in the 1996 school shooting. Nearly thirty years on, her memory lives on in an unlikely, gentle place: a flower which bears her name.

Galanthus “Sophie North’ is a local discovery by Dr. Evelyn Stevens in Sheriffmuir near Dunblane which was blooming at that time and a snowdrop campaign began to raise funds for a petition for gun control which garnered more than a million signatures, eventually leading to the Firearms Act of 1997. This naming of the snowdrop is a moving memory instead of a static memorial. Every time a gardener grows her flower and says her name, whether they know her story or not, is its own kind of memorial.

Across the Atlantic, when the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary happened in 2012, the parents of victims of Dunblane had written the parents of Sandy Hook in solidarity. They passed gun laws, we offered thoughts and prayers.

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