by Eric Byler, Story of America
The journey of Darren Wagner will help you touch the surface of an ocean of despair that has washed over Newtown and Sandy Hook, Connecticut. We had to stop filming after Darren told this story to Annabel. She was overcome with tears and could not muster a follow-up question. Behind the camera, I was crying too.
When we resumed, Annabel asked Darren about parenting, and social expectations of masculinity. Not so implicit was the fact that he had been crying, and his two teenage sons were right upstairs.
Before the Sandy Hook massacre, Darren had never really talked to his sons about his 11-year career as a Deputy Sheriff in Ohio. He had never told them about the horrific gun violence he had investigated, the tragedies he had witnessed, the "regret to inform" conversations he'd had, over and over again. He had never told them how gun violence had caused him to leave the law enforcement field and seek a peaceful life, a journey that led him to their mother, Georgia, and a quiet life in Australia, where Georgia and their two sons were born. [MORE]
Via Charles Lang
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