By Bobbie Foust, Special to Marshall County Daily
“The kids are moving the mountain,” said a national television reporter last week. He referred to actions students throughout the nation are taking to make schools and communities safe from mass shooters.
Marshall County/ West Kentucky students are part of that movement with their own March for Our Lives scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday, March 24 at Memorial Park in Calvert City. Marchers are in for a treat; not only will they hear speeches from notable student and adult leaders, but they will also hear ballads performed by Princeton’s Alonzo Pennington, a well-known hunting guide and folk/musician. And Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Dr. Sterling Haring, a scholar in injury prevention, will address fears students face in their daily lives. Haring treated students wounded in the January 23 shooting at Marshall County High School.
Pennington, who is a candidate for Congress from Kentucky’s First District, said his remarks will not be political. “I’ll be speaking as the father of two,” he said, noting he has a 4-year-old soon to enter kindergarten and a 12-year-old son already in school.” He is also expected to perform several ballads including the poignant “Teach Your Children Well.”
“I can play guitar and sing, and then make a few remarks about how arming teachers is an asinine idea,” he said. “But we need more resource officers, and we need metal detectors at every door and things like that.”
“It is really an honor to be asked to speak at something like this,” Pennington said. “… Maybe we’ll have an opportunity to fix these things and help prevent something like this from ever happening again. I get a little emotional thinking about the danger my kids are in. I don’t have the words for it, it’s (school shooting) such a terrible tragedy.”
Besides his work as a hunting guide, Pennington has performed on National Public Radio, public television, the Grand Ole Opry, and has been featured in a documentary about the life of Merle Travis. At the march, he may perform a few songs such as Cosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s “Teach Your Children Well,” or Woody Guthrie’s “This Land is Your Land,” in addition to his brief remarks.
Pennington said he wants to be a voice of someone who “knows something about guns,” and to be a leader on the issue. “Half the year I’m a hunting guide; I’m familiar with proper safety and storage of guns, storage of the ammo, trigger locks and I’m educated in guns and hunting. … I don’t own any of what they call assault rifles. It’s not a tool for hunting, and I’m not a shooter so much as I am a hunter. Some people just love to shoot, but there are things we’ve got to work on to make sure we’re getting proper background checks and make sure people are the proper age to own weapons.”
Loyd Ford, editor and publisher of The Lake News in Calvert City, and state Rep. Will Coursey will also speak. Ford, a veteran journalist, and past president of the Kentucky Press Association, was one of the early reporters on the scene January 23 after a 14-year-old student shot and killed Bailey Holt and Preston Cope, and injured 14 others. Coursey sponsored a bill in the Kentucky House to ensure mental health professionals are hired in the state’s high schools. Judge-Executive Kevin Neal, who has proposed a plan to secure Marshall County High School, was invited to speak but had a schedule conflict.
Ford said he is proud to be part of the rally “and proud just to be associated with this group of students.” He added that stopping society’s tolerance of gun violence has to start at the bottom. “It’s going to have to come from the ground up because it’s not going to come from the neck up,” he said. “They (national and state leaders) value their power andtheir money; the children value their lives and I value the children’s lives over the power and money. I don’t believe we can just sit on our hands and keep doing nothing and act like there is nothing we can do,” Ford said. “That’s just not true; I’m not going to do nothing. It may cost me a lot because of where we are, but I’m not going to sit idly by and say, ‘Well we just can’t do anything about this’ because we can!’”
Ford believes the shooting tragedy indicates fundamental changes in our society since he was a youth. “And one of the changes is we have institutionalized everything instead of personalizing it,” he said. He opposes any idea that would “turn the high school into a prison” and move the sheriff’s department onto the campus. He also opposes arming teachers. “I live with a 34-year retired teacher, and there’s not a way in the world that she wants a gun close to the school, let alone have one herself. … if guns were going to stop all this violence, they would have done it a long time ago because we’ve got a plethora of guns.”
Student speakers are: Seth Adams, Korbin Brandon, Lily Dunn and Mary Cox of Marshall County, Lexi Fortner and Sarah Jacobs of Murray High, and Jack Daughaday and Makayla Wadkins of Calloway County. Topics they plan to address include: Student safety and security; life versus money; mental health and home lives; gun policies; compassion and unity; we are family; the National Rifle Association’s influence on people; past versus present; and anyone can be a terrorist. Did someone say, “They are moving the mountain?”