Photos, T-shirts and donations: Uvalde turns to the families of the victims

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Nancy and Art Sutton have been taking pictures of children from all of the Uvalde schools for twenty-eight years. The portraits of the 19 children killed in last Tuesday’s massacre are now on the counter of his store, ready for their families to collect.

“I just want to bless you with photos”Nancy Sutton tells Efe in the store she shares with her husband in this town in South Texas (USA), decorated with photos of students in caps and gowns, smiling families and also of a young man pretending to shoot a gun. of fire.

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After the shooting at Robb Elementary School, the couple went looking for the photos they took of the shooting victims at the beginning of each school year and contacted their families to “pick the one you like best.”

“This way we can develop those photos in large size, so they can put them at funerals, or hang them forever in their homes,” explains the co-owner of the “Uvalde Photo” store.

PHOTOS OF THE WHOLE CLASS

While showing Efe the photos of the 19 children and another of the entire class with the two teachers who lost their lives, Irma García and Eva Mireles, the photographer remembers how happy the children are when she and her husband come to take the class photos at the beginning of the school year.

“They are happy that they are going to take pictures of them, very excited. Probably because it means they miss some of the classes, but it’s a fun time for them”, emphasizes Nancy.

The 59-year-old photographer has been immortalizing those moments for so long that she has even taken class portraits of “the parents and grandparents” of some of the children who are now starting to attend the city’s schools.

A composite photo shows the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, at a memorial in the town square, in Uvalde, Texas, USA. (EFE/EPA/TANNEN MAURY/)

“It’s a job where you can’t be sad because you have to make people smile,” he says.

Some time ago, when she was taking photos in the same school where the shooting took place, there was a security alert and the entrances and exits of the center were temporarily blocked, and Nancy remembers that the children “behaved very well”.

THE DRIVE TO DO SOMETHING

Tuesday’s tragedy has hit this majority-Hispanic town of fewer than 16,000 people hard, and many businesses are turning to help the families of the victims.

Two funeral homes in the area have offered to organize funeral services free of charge, there are no more appointments to donate blood for the 17 injured, free food is available in the central square and a local bank has established a fund to channel donations for the families.

On Tuesday, when the authorities issued the alert that there was a shooter in a school, “the longest twenty minutes” of Ignacio Mata’s life began, who has two children in a local institute and took a while to verify that the attack was being produced in another center.

“It has been very hard. We started hearing sirens around 11:20 or 11:30 and they didn’t stop until 4:30 in the afternoon. I went to bed still listening to sirens in my head, ”she recalls in an interview with Efe.

When he woke up, he began to think about how he could help families and in about 30 minutes he designed a logo with the slogan “Uvalde Strong” (“Uvalde strong”), the same one that is now painted on almost every storefront and that seeks to unite the community after the tragedy.

“At the store they joke with me that I’m not good at a lot of things, but designing and softball are two of the only things I know how to do,” says Mata, who co-owns the t-shirt printing business Genesis Screenprinting, humbly. , in the center of Uvalde.

T-SHIRTS FOR FUNDRAISING

The logo that Mata designed is now printed on hundreds of T-shirts scattered throughout his store, which has opened on Saturday to deal with the enormous demand it is receiving: it has already sold at least 350 in less than three days and has orders from Mexico or the states. Americans as far away as Minnesota.

“It costs 20 dollars, of which 15 goes to the fund for families (which has been established by the local First State Bank),” explains Mata.

The color of the school attacked on Tuesday is maroon (icing), but it is more expensive to buy shirts in that shade, so, in order to “donate more money” to the fund, Mata has opted for a light gray background for the time being.

On it, it prints its logo in cherry color with a white border: the “U” for Uvalde is adorned with a coyote, the animal that represented the Robb school, and instead of the “O” for “Strong” there is a silhouette of the state of Texas, under a 21 in tribute to the victims, from which angel wings and a halo emerge.

Many churches in the area have contacted Mata to use his jerseys at their vigils, and several baseball teams have asked him to wear them at games they have this weekend outside of Uvalde.

Seven families of the victims have also commissioned him, and Mata has found a benefactor so that those relatives do not have to pay anything to receive the shirts.

“My partner (in the store) told me that (what we raised) was not going to be enough (…). But it is not about large donations, it is about all of us contributing a little bit, ”he stressed.

Source: Elcomercio