Like many Americans, Mayor Rick Gray found it hard to sleep Friday night, after hearing about the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

As he struggled, in vain, to comprehend the scale of the violence — six women, and 20 first-graders, ages 6 and 7 (babies, really) gunned down in their classrooms — he kept thinking about his own grandchildren.

And as he watched the grief and shock etched on the faces of Newtown residents as they gathered Friday night in their local churches, he realized that people here might need to gather, too, to "express their grief and sympathy and mourning."

So, on Saturday evening, at Gray's urging, the Downtown Ministerium — which represents about 15 city churches — held a community vigil service at St. James Episcopal Church on North Duke Street.

About a hundred people turned out for the vigil service, as nearby, on the steps of the Lancaster County Courthouse, several dozen more held a candlelight vigil to protest gun violence.

Among those at St. James were the mayor and other local elected officials — and Kimberly Bajlovic, of Manheim Township, who was there with her husband and their 17-month-old daughter.

Bajlovic said "it just helps for people to come together and remember the children who lost their lives."

Danielle O'Shea, of East Hempfield Township, said the Sandy Hook massacre left her wondering, "Are my children going to be safe in this world?"

She was at the vigil service with her husband, Matt O'Shea, and their two children, ages 18 months and 3 1/2 years. They were accompanied by Matt's mother, Barb O'Shea.

"If it can happen in Connecticut, it can happen in Lancaster — and has," said Barb O'Shea, alluding to the 2006 shootings at the West Nickel Mines Amish schoolhouse, where five girls were killed and five others wounded.

"We can't comprehend it, and I don't we ever will. I just hope that those parents can get through this, and their the children are in a better place," said Barb O'Shea, whose sister-in-law works as an oncology nurse at Danbury Hospital, where several victims of Friday's massacre were taken.

Barb O'Shea said she lost the first of her five children to sudden infant death syndrome, and knows just how devastating the death of a child can be. "You don't get over that," she said.

Danielle O'Shea said that in the wake of Friday's massacre "as a parent, you just stop and realize how truly blessed we are that are our children are with us."

She said she and her husband were "heartbroken" for the parents who lost children at Sandy Hook Elementary.

Matt O'Shea, a teacher at the Lancaster County Youth Intervention Center, was wearing a black bracelet stamped with "F.A.M.I.L.Y." Standing for "Forget About Me/I Love You," it was the motto of the Rutgers University football team under Coach Greg Schiano.

Matt O'Shea has handed out the bracelets to his students at the youth intervention center, and has adopted the acronym as his classroom motto.

It has not yet been revealed what drove Adam Lanza to kill 20 children and seven adults, including his own mother, before killing himself. The New York Times has reported that he may have had Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

But Matt O'Shea believes that reaching out to troubled young people may help to end some of the violence that has shattered so many lives.

Mayor Gray cited the availability of guns, and TV violence, as two possible contributing factors.

At the vigil service, he said that each time "innocents are slaughtered," "we lower the flag, and say a prayer, and then we raise the flag, and get on with life."

Gray asserted that it's time to get at the causes of the violence, and do something to end it.

The Rev. Timothy Mentzer, pastor of Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, spoke in his homily of how wrong it is that children should die before their parents, that parents should send their children off to school never to see them alive again, that the children's bodies were lying dead in their school instead of in "the loving embrace of their parents."

He said that when he took his own young son to his basketball game at his school Saturday morning, "for the first time, I was afraid to walk into that building."

The shock, the horror, the sadness, sparked by Friday's massacre were all normal reactions, the pastor said, noting parents may feel fearful Monday morning, when the school buses come to take their children to school.

And it's also to be expected if some adults are questioning God about why Friday's massacre happened. "God allows room for us to argue with him, to challenge him, to demand answers," Mentzer said, noting that "the good order of creation has been violated."

But, he said, "God is Lord of all, and the last word belongs to God. And that last word is life, not death."

Borrowing from Johann Sebastian Bach's "Christmas Oratorio," Mentzer said, "What can the world do to us when we are safe in Jesus' hands?"

Mentzer's homily was followed by a moving rendition of "Tears in Heaven," the song co-written by Eric Clapton after his 4-year-old son fell out of a New York apartment window to his death.

As JR Ankney, St. James' director of music, sang the heartrending song, a woman sitting alone in a pew pressed her hands to her mouth, and bowed her head. Another woman removed her glasses, and wiped away tears.

Prayers were offered for the victims of Friday's massacre, the survivors, the Sandy Hook faculty, the families — and for "the young man who perpetrated these horrible acts," his mother, and his surviving family members.

And a prayerful plea was offered for "the public will to end gun violence."

At the courthouse, Charles and Marga Lane of Lancaster Township were among those who lit candles in honor of the Sandy Hook victims.

Marga Lane said she grew up in Germany during World War II. "For me, guns are anathema," she said.

Her husband said he didn't understand why "our politicians allow the NRA to dictate policy on public safety. … There's no reason for anyone to have assault weapons in their home."

According to media reports Saturday, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association said that until the facts of the Sandy Hook massacre are "thoroughly known," the NRA would have no comment.

Mimi Shapiro, who organized the courthouse candlelight vigil for MoveOn, said that Congress needs "someone like Thaddeus Stevens, somebody who actually calls it as they see it, and knows that change is not impossible."

"When you see those innocent faces," of the children of Sandy Hook, Shapiro said, you have to ask, "'What kind of crazy person would do this?' Guns and the accessibility to them make it way too easy, if you're crazy, to do crazy things."

scassidy@lnpnews.com