President Barack Obama made an appropriately somber speech when he visited the University of Arizona at Tucson on Wednesday, addressing the tragic events that transpired when an obviously deranged gunman last Saturday reportedly killed six people and wounded many others.
The president said: “To the families of those we’ve lost; to all who called them friends; to the students of this university; the public servants gathered tonight; and the people of Tucson and Arizona: I have come here tonight as an American who, like all Americans, kneel to pray with you today, and will stand by you tomorrow.”
Obama acknowledged, “There is nothing I can say that will fill the sudden hole torn in your hearts.”
He gave faces to the horror as he recalled by name some of the victims: Judge John Roll, a judge of 40 years; George and Dorothy Morris, “high school sweethearts” who had enjoyed a “50-year honeymoon”; Phyllis Schneck, who had retired from New Jersey to Tucson “to beat the snow”; Dorwan and Mavy Stoddard, who had returned to Tucson after “about 70 years” to “be boyfriend and girlfriend again”; Gabe Zimmerman, who as a congresswoman’s aide “made the cares of thousands of her constituents his own”; and Christina Taylor Green, 9, “a student, a dancer, a gymnast and a swimmer.”
Obama said, “We add our faith to yours that Representative Gabrielle Giffords and the other living victims of this tragedy pull through.”