Date: Fri 16-Jul-1999

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

edink-Gowdy-murder

Full Text:

ED INK: The Town Behind The Headlines

The real estate section in last Sunday's New York Times profiled Newtown as a

place of "Pre-1800 Houses, Fine Schools and Horses." The article, citing

everything from dirt roads to the fine cuisine, made the town sound very

attractive and very pricey to those who might be considering a move here. At

about the same time that Sunday edition of the Times started making its way to

the newsstands, there was a confrontation between teenagers at the side of

Riverside Road that ended in gunfire. A car sped off, leaving Jason Gowdy

lying dead, shot twice in the head. Two stunned friends, who had been walking

down the road with Jason on a fine summer evening just moments before, called

for help. But it was already too late.

The image of Newtown as the ideal home town portrayed in the Times contrasted

sharply with the image of Newtown as a crime scene, which played out in

regional television broadcasts and in print in the days following the

Riverside Road shooting. While we all could take pride in the former

representation of Newtown and feel the pain and anguish of the latter, we know

that neither of these isolated portrayals of Newtown give an accurate picture

of our community life. We have learned in all our years of publishing a

newspaper that a town is a complex, living, changing thing, and even our best

efforts at telling Newtown's story in any given week are bound to fall short.

So we pick up where we left off and try again the next week with pretty much

the same result.

Our houses, our schools, our scenery, and even our crimes help fill in the

picture of our town, yet the true story of Newtown encompasses the story of

23,000 lives lived in proximity. On any given day it is a story of deepest

grief and highest joy. Our challenge as a community is the same every day,

whether the day is marked by triumph or tragedy: to live our lives, to

transact our business, and to conduct our public affairs with the awareness

that we are joined in this human condition one to another, and that our

collective fate depends entirely on how we treat each other as individuals. If

we treat each other with understanding, respect, and compassion, then life in

Newtown will always be better, richer, and fuller than even the most

flattering headline can convey.