Stevie Nicks is reflecting on the tragic mass shooting that occurred at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022.
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On Wednesday (May 24), Nicks took to Twitter to share a poignant letter on the one-year anniversary of the shooting that claimed the lives of 21 people, 19 of whom were students and two teachers. Titled “The Lost Futures of Uvalde,” Nicks looks back on her own childhood in Texas and how the young lives who were lost in the shooting didn’t get the chance to grow up. All of the student victims were between the ages of nine and 11.
The Fleetwood Mac frontwoman recalls how her family moved to El Paso, Texas, when she was in the third grade. She soon started taking ballet classes, professing to her mother that she one day wanted to be a “prima ballerina.” A year later, she recalls listening to records with her grandfather and falling in love with music and singing.
When she was 15, her family moved to California and she was gifted a guitar on which she wrote her first song, solidifying her desire to make music for a living. “As we ponder the one year anniversary of Uvalde, and the myriad of shootings that have happened since that fateful day, I can’t help but ask myself, ‘What if I had been shot and killed by a man with a gun while in my ballet class in the third grade?'” Nicks writes. “And I can’t help but think of all those little lost futures.
“And so, in closing, my arms go around each one of those little hearts like a ring of angels that will always be missing,” she continues. “I will never be able to let this go…If anything, I will do all I can to keep this story alive.”
In the aftermath of the shooting, Nicks spoke out in support of increased gun control measures, such as stricter access to assault rifles like the one used in the shooting. “So, I ask you; do you want to go down in the history books as being responsible for these school shootings that will inevitably continue, or do you want to be remembered as the people who finally gathered together in unity and empathy ~ as the people who stopped it,” she said at the time.
(Photo Credit: LiPo Ching)
