The Highland Park Shooting

This week I should be celebrating Mark Braverman's Abacus Medal and the Fields Medalists. Instead my mind has been focused 25 miles north of Chicago.

Mass shootings in the United States have become far too commonplace, but the shooting at a fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois hit home. Literally Highland Park was home for me, from 2003-2012. We've been in downtown Highland Park hundreds of times. We've attended their fourth of July parade in the past. My daughter participated in it as part of the high school marching band. 

We were members of North Shore Congregation Israel. My wife, who had a party planning business back then, worked closely with NSCI events coordinator Jacki Sundhein, tragically killed in the attack.

We lived close to Bob's Deli and Pantry and we'd often walk over there for sandwiches or snacks, sometimes served by Bob Crimo himself. The alleged shooter, Bobby Crimo, was his son.

We spent the fourth with friends who came down from Glencoe, the town just south of Highland Park. We spent much of the day just searching for updates on our phones.

I wish we could find ways to reduce the shootings in Highland Park and those like it, the violence that plagues Chicago and other major cities and the highly polarized world we live in which both hampers real gun reforms and creates online groups that help enable these awful events. But right now I just mourn for the lives lost in the town that was my home, a town that will never fully recover from this tragedy.