As Annunciation goes back to school, former Red Lake principal reflects on healing after shooting
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Students were back in class at Annunciation Catholic School in south Minneapolis today for the first time since the mass shooting that occurred nearly three weeks ago.
Chris Dunshee likely knows how staff and students are feeling at Annunciation. He was the principal at Red Lake High School in northern Minnesota in 2005 when a student killed 10 people, including himself.
He spoke with MPR News host Emily Bright about his memories of that transition back to class — and the days and weeks ahead for these students and staff.
Click play above to listen to their conversation, or read the transcript below, edited for time and clarity.
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What do you remember about that first day back in 2005?
So it was difficult to, of course, go back into that section of the school where most of the people were killed, and when we brought them back, we had decided that that area needed to be completely renovated. The kids were apprehensive, I think, coming back in, so we tried to be prepared for that by having support available to the kids.
I imagine there’s a line you have to walk between getting back to normalcy and understanding that normalcy will never exist as it did before. How did you navigate that?
Sad to say, a lot of the students had undergone traumatic experiences in the past, and I don’t know if that caused them to be more resilient than perhaps the staff, but it just seemed to affect the staff a little bit more than the students. Some of the staff were unable to come back.
It has to be stressful beyond measure to be a leader during this time, to try to figure out steps forward. You were hospitalized with a heart attack just a few weeks later, and you had to learn to deal with your own pain and the trauma from that event. Twenty years later, does that pain ever go away?
I don’t believe it ever goes away. I think in my case, I tended to just compartmentalize it. I just tried to take those feelings and then set it aside. Along with the counseling I received and everything, I think that’s what helped me to get through it.
You did an interview with NPR after the shooting, and you mentioned that Columbine shooting survivors showed up to Red Lake to help and give advice. There have been hundreds of school shootings since 2005. I’m curious if you were ever called upon to give advice to other schools as they navigated tragedies.
They would reach out, and some instances, I reached out to them as well. But like you said, there have just been way, way too many shootings and school tragedies since then. I wish there was something that we could do.
It just seems like our schools have turned into war zones in some respects, and there’s just no way schools and churches and shopping centers should be that way in this country. I’m a gun owner myself, and I love to hunt and that type of thing but some of these weapons that they’re producing out there, I’m just not sure that they’re needed.
As long as they’re available, and we have those out there in our society, I’m just afraid this is just going to continue.
What would you want the students and staff at Annunciation to know in the weeks and months ahead?
It’s kind of like — I believe what President Biden said when he lost his son — that you’re never going to get over that, but the pain will start to turn into memories of their loved ones, hopefully that will help them get through the pain that they’re of course, going to suffer with.
