Portraits of innocence

By AD CRABLE and CINDY STAUFFER

IT WAS SUCH a singularly brilliant morning. So many remember that.

Blue-eyed sisters Mary Liz and Lena Miller carried new lunchboxes on that sunny Monday.

Rachel Ann Stoltzfus, a sturdy redhead who lived just up the road, carried a sandwich, probably ham and cheese, tucked in her purple Igloo container that day.

Shortly before 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 2, the girls began their carefree walk to school, joining other children heading down a two-lane road and beelining across soybean fields. They converged on the yellow schoolhouse with the cast-iron bell on top, the ball field out front and the white-planked fence surrounding it.

On this morning, children met up with neighbor children who were not relatives but shared the familiar names of generations of Amish families here — a Stoltzfus boy from one farm joining the Stoltzfus girls from another.

A neighbor saw Anna Mae and Sarah Ann Stoltzfus skipping across a field toward the school.

Rosanna King, a memory-game whiz, often ran down the lane with her brother to meet older neighbor Esther King, a Scrabble fan. These two girls were related: Rosanna was Esther’s cousin’s daughter.

Emma, Barbie and Marian Fisher, ages 9, 11 and 13, walked together, passing their family’s greenhouse. Despite the difference in their ages, they were all about the same size.

The Fishers sometimes would meet up with the Ebersol boys and their pretty little sister, “sweetly shy” Naomi Rose, named after their grandma.
“It was,” said one Nickel Mines mother, “a normal morning.”

Kids and angels

Eleven girls from seven families sat at their desks in the West Nickel Mines School on Oct. 2.

The school was one of about 175 such schools serving Lancaster County’s 24,000 Amish residents. All the schools consist of one open classroom and all are about the same size.

These were “ordinary children,” kids with solid dresses in navy blues and greens who liked to bounce on a trampoline, get a candy treat and count down the days to their relatives’ upcoming weddings during the Amish marrying months in the fall, say those who knew them.

But on that day, they also were angels, some say. Five would give up their lives in a fashion almost too horrible to imagine. The rest would be part of what some now believe are miracles.

Shortly after their first recess, 10 of the girls, ages 6 to 13, would be shot execution-style by Charles Carl Roberts IV, who then took his own life.
The children’s names and ages have been read and heard by thousands in a world that is still trying to fathom what happened on that horrific day.
But who were these girls? What did they mean to their families the morning they left home for what everyone thought was just another start to a school week?

In interviews, 13 family members and neighbors who were close to the girls spoke about them and their lives. Everyone asked that their names not be used.

A good helper

Rachel Ann Stoltzfus is the only redhead in her family.

The fourth-grader was one of eight children and shared a room with her only sister, who was younger. She also had four older brothers and two younger brothers.

A friendly and fun-loving child, Rachel Ann liked to play with dolls. She also liked crafts. And like many Amish children, she was a good helper around the house, washing and drying dishes for her family.

After a breakfast of usually cereal and maybe toast, she walked to school with her three school-age brothers, stopping down the road to meet up with schoolmates Lena and Mary Liz Miller.

On Oct. 2, she and her brothers left the house without kissing their mother, as they often did. They simply said goodbye and walked out the door.

Happily, it was not the final farewell for Rachel Ann, who celebrated her ninth birthday later that month.

Never far apart

Mary Liz, 8, and Lena Miller, 7, were as close as two sisters could be.

The two slept in the same oak bed, under a rose quilt, both given to them by a family member. Nearby were cribs that held their “dollies.”

Both had blue eyes.

“Where one was,” said someone who knew them, “the other was.”

Not that the two girls were alike in every way.

Mary Liz had dark hair and a plump face. She liked to be outdoors gardening or working in the barn with her father, helping with the cows. She helped tend to her family’s chickens.

Over last summer, she worked on arithmetic with her teacher, wanting to do well this year in a subject that sometimes challenged her.

Lena had lighter-brown hair and a pear-shaped face and was a bit thinner than her sister. She was also a bit more talkative.

When she got very excited, she would chatter so quickly in Pennsylvania Dutch that those who loved her would tease her they could not understand what she was saying.

Lena enjoyed working with her mother in the house. She also liked to tiptoe into the house of a relative, who would pretend to be surprised and nicknamed her the “little mouse.”

Both girls were industrious, helping a family member who had surgery last summer, watering her flowers, bringing in wash, shelling peas, doing whatever needed to be done.

The two told their mother this year that she no longer would need a “hired girl” to help her with chores. They would do the work themselves, they said.

They enjoyed treats, though they were too well-mannered to ask for them. Smarties were a favorite candy.

“And they were smart,” said someone who knew them.

And they loved their family, which also included a little sister and two little brothers. Both girls were very excited about an upcoming family wedding.
Sunday, Oct. 1, their family had visitors. The girls went upstairs to get ready and straighten up their room. They arranged their dollies in their little cribs.

The next morning, a woman who often saw them walk past her house on their way to school was doing laundry.

Both girls were carrying new lunchboxes. They had found them in a banana box filled with bags that a relative had bought for them at the nearby Nickel Mine Auction.

Busy inside her house, the woman did not look out the window, beyond the bird feeders, to watch the sisters pass her house for the final time.

That still haunts her.

Fisher sisters: 1, 2, 3

The Fisher girls were born two years apart, sandwiched between an older brother and three younger ones.

The eldest girl was Marian, 13. Fine-featured, with blond hair, she helped her dad in the barn in the evenings, washing the milkers used on their dairy cows. Being the oldest, she had her own bedroom at home.

Next came Barbie, 11. Dark-haired, with dark eyes, she shared a room with the next sister in line, Emma, age 9.

Bubbly, confident and loquacious, Emma frequently sang her favorite Christian songs on the way to school.

“She always sees the good in things,” an acquaintance said.

Some would later view Emma as a channel for miracles.

The three girls grew up in a family enclave, living in a large, connected four-family household that included their paternal grandparents, their great-grandmother and their widowed aunt and her two daughters.

The girls enjoyed visits from extended family. When they were small, the girls would play “babies” with the older girls, Marian and Barbie willingly taking the role of the babies.

The three sisters and one of their younger brothers often walked to school with children from nearby farms, including the Stoltzfus sisters.

The group would avoid the road and cut across the farm fields, traveling to and from school the way the crow flies.

Two of the three Fisher girls came home to their family fold, one that day, one several weeks later.

Marian did not.

Notes to each other

Sarah Ann and Anna Mae Stoltzfus were four years apart. The only girls in a family that included six brothers, they were close.

Both tall, hearty girls, they shared a room. Each had a small dish on a dresser. In it, they would leave playful notes, messages and jokes for each other.

They liked to jump on a trampoline outside their home.

Both also were fine “scholars,” the term Amish families use to refer to children who attend school. Sarah Ann, 8, a “jolly girl,” loved to read.

When they weren’t in school, the two helped at their parents’ Flemington, N.J., market stand, which sold Amish-crafted lawn and house furniture. Anna Mae, 12, served as a cashier.

Anna Mae also enjoyed helping at home with the laundry, a regular, time-consuming task for the family of 10.

On the morning of Oct. 2, she was in the midst of that work when it was time to go to school. She wanted to finish, but her family did not want her to be late.

Off she headed, across the fields, joining with her sister Sarah Ann, brothers and classmates.

It was Anna Mae’s last trip.

“I feel like traveling on”

Naomi Rose Ebersol loved school. But the 7-year-old loved her parents even more and hated leaving them.

A second-grader, she frequently got teary-eyed when she set off with two older brothers for the short walk through the patch of old woods to reach the school.

The morning of the shooting was no different.

Shy, petite and pretty, she had five brothers but no sisters. The boys were protective of their sister. She played along on many of their adventures and loved jumping on the trampoline. The boys obligingly played dolls with their sister.

Along with her siblings, Naomi Rose loved collecting the mail and often would sit in the grass on the bank by the mailbox, waiting for the delivery.
On her birthday in July, the girl with the dark hair and big brown eyes had gotten her first dog of her very own. Initially, she named the mixed breed Margie.

But the pet’s name proved too similar to that of her brother, Marvin, who would often show up when she called for Margie to come. So Margie became Shirley.

Naomi Rose, who had “skin like milk,” was named after her grandmother.

Later, after the shootings, a survivor would name her newborn Naomi Rose after the quietly crying, wide-eyed little girl she tried to console while curled on the floor of the schoolhouse, awaiting death.

Naomi Rose also loved to sing. She always seemed to have a favorite hymn. Her last favorite was an old Southern gospel classic, “I Feel Like Traveling On.”

My heavenly home is bright and fair
I feel like traveling on
No pain nor death can enter there
I feel like traveling on.

Eager to face the day

Petite with light hair, 6-year-old Rosanna King was in her first year at the school.

She loved life. “She was always eager to get up in the morning,” said a relative.

Rosanna lived on a farmette with horses and chickens. She had two brothers. Her father operated a welding business about a mile away.

She liked playing memory games and could beat many of her relatives. She also had a knack for reciting Bible verses.

School was a delight. She would fly down the lane with her brother to meet Esther King, a relative, then cut across fields to the school. Her mother had just sewn a new school dress for her.

Rosanna was equally at home playing ball outside or playing with dolls inside. She was her mother’s little helper, peeling potatoes and baking.

In the days before the shooting, Rosanna was getting increasingly excited about her aunt’s wedding. “It was going to be a special day for her,” said a relative.

She also loved singing. A few weeks after the shootings, her classmates came to her home to sing to her.

No one knew if she heard them.

Tragedy runs in family

The second-oldest in the school, 13-year-old Esther King was a small girl with brown hair and eyes, and glasses. She loved dogs, singing and her stamp kit, which she used to make cards adorned with little pictures and Bible verses to send to friends and relatives.

She shared a room with one of her two sisters. She also had four brothers, two of whom walked with her to school that fateful morning.

Esther lost her father, an Amish minister, five years ago when a van crashed into the back of the buggy he was driving. Esther’s older brother, then 17, suffered a broken pelvis and leg.

Esther would prove to be a survivor, too.

Final morning together

The day started as it always did at West Nickel Mines School, with a Bible story, a prayer and singing.

Visitors had come to see the children that morning and were a welcome presence in their Amish school room.

In fact, a sign near the blackboard read: “Visitors bubble up our days.”

The children had some lessons. Then it was time for their first recess.

Up the road, a man stood by the soda machine outside the Nickel Mine Auction. A passerby saw him watching the children as they raced about the schoolyard.

Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, drove a milk truck that had stopped at some of the children’s farms the night before. He knew many of their families.

Likely, no one at the school would have given Roberts a second glance.

Recess over, the children filed inside.

A few minutes later, some of the kids heard the scrunch of gravel as a pickup backed into the schoolyard.

A few faces were pressed to the two front windows as Roberts walked between two wooden porch posts decorated with Indian corn, opened the unlocked front door and stepped into the schoolroom.

The schoolchildren turned in their desks to face the unlikely visitor, backlit in the doorway.