CAPE COD – “You have to brace yourself, and then you keep going on,” explained Pat Hatch, president of Cape Cod Grandmothers Against Gun Violence, of how her group continues to fight while the uniquely American gun carnage continues.
Six years after 20-year-old Adam Lanza, armed with his mother’s legally-purchased guns, walked into the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and killed 26 people, including 20 first graders, the list of places whose names that have come to mean shootings to the outside world (When Orlando happened… When Pittsburgh happened…) continues to grow at an alarming rate.
“This is a long-term battle. We’re not going to win it overnight,” said Hatch.
That Hatch and others in the Cape Cod Grandmothers Against Gun Violence are in such a battle at all is quite surprising to her and perhaps to every grandmother in the non-profit group started in the wake of the December 14, 2012 shooting in Newtown.
There are about 400 members in the group, said Hatch, who has three granddaughters. For this story, Cape Cod Wave talked to three of the members.
Marilyn Lariviere, Pat Hatch & Donna Hannigan. CAPE COD WAVE PHOTO
“One of the things we are fighting,” said Donna Hannigan of Dennis, “is the stereotype of the word, ‘grandmothers’. It elicits visions of emotional little old grannies with knitting needles. That is so far from what we are.”
“Most of us have advanced degrees,” said Hannigan, a retired high school literature teacher, who has 10 grandchildren. “We’re not given to emotions at all. We are discriminating thinkers and fair-minded.”
They are also, in fact, grandmothers.
Hatch had spent 24 years as a computer engineer and then a manager at Raytheon when she retired to Sandwich, and then Cotuit. “I was taking art lessons and helping in the wildlife center in Barnstable,” said Hatch.
“I was retired and happy as a little clam,” she said.
“And then Sandy Hook happened,” said Hatch, the president of Cape Cod Grandmothers Against Gun Violence. “My youngest granddaughter was around 5 at the time.”
“It was just stunning to me. I can’t even explain how I felt when I heard of this. It struck so close to home. The horror of it did something to me.”
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