The Power of Silence[:zh]Uuii#4rzbXQhr5)0

Two Saturdays ago, I was driving home inhaling the gorgeous view over the Charles River when a teenage girl’s breathlessly urgent voice on my car radio, took my breath away.  18-year-old Emma Gonzalez called out the names of her friends who “would never”  complain about piano practice, play basketball or walk to school again with his brother.  Then she identified her classmates, one by one, all students at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting who would never live to do what they dreamed to do in life. Altogether, there were seventeen names. After naming the 17th victim, Emma stopped.

There was silence. Radio silence.  Before I thought my radio was dead, WGBH (Boston local NPR station) journalists Jim Braude and Margery who had been moderating an interview with a politician before cutting to Emma’s speech live from Washington D.C., began to panic. They went back to that interview guest asking, “What’s going? It’s quiet…Is the whole place…quiet?”

I sensed anxiety or unease about “dead air” as we used to call it in the broadcast media industry. That brings to mind those days when I was a TV reporter, I had to fill air by describing the scene I was doing a live shot from non-stop. Dead air was not allowed. Before long, the radio interview guest who was at the rally said, “Yeah…it’s quiet. She’s on stage. It’s a moment of silence. The crowd is taking it in.”

That period of silence was movingly powerful.

It moved me to the computer right after I got home to google Emma Gonzalez. I wanted to know how long she stood there and what that scene was like.  As it turns out, Emma stood still for more than five minutes with a timer. The crowd interrupted only briefly when she said nothing. They later echoed her message, “Never Again, Never Again.” My eyes were fixed on her eyes – which began still, then soft. When her timer went off to signal her to resume her speech, she took 15 more seconds to urge the crowd to “fight for your lives before it’s someone else’s job.”

Over the next 15 minutes, I found myself replaying her speech, including speechless moments, twice. I sat with my laptop and soak in her sound of silence. I felt touched by her spirit even as I felt her grief. In silence, I googled all the victim’s names, scrolled down each one to read their short bio, look into their photos. Each face was a bright light. Each light gave me chill as I imagined their last minutes on that horrible day. Then one face, a Chinese boy named Peter Wang caught my eye. I got curious about his immigrant story. How did he end up there?

I learned that he was fifteen years old, a junior holding the door for his classmates to escape. He got shot multiple times while trying to save others. I googled some more and found that he was born in Brooklyn, before moving to Florida with his parents who don’t speak English. That he had dreamed to go to West Point and to serve his country. That he had died that day, as a member of the US Army Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (JROTC), a school programme for potential US military officers. He was wearing his JROTC uniform that day.

What he never grew up to achieve, he did so giving up his own life. His sense of duty, honor, selflessness moved thousands to petition for his posthumous admission to West Point. That petition was granted.

The US Army also bestowed the Medal of Heroism on three students who were killed, including Peter.

As I write, I am sending him my salute in silence. His sacrifice rendered me speechless.