Kyle and Cannon Jones outside Kyle's workplace, the island's new boutique called Salt. Cannon works at Gasparilla Properties.

BY MARCY SHORTUSE - Kyle and Cannon Jones were both at work at their respective island businesses when they first started to hear about a school shooting somewhere in the country on Friday. It was shocking for them to comprehend how, and why, it could happen. But as details became clearer, they were even more horrified.

It was their childhood school that everyone was talking about. In the same classrooms where they learned, in the same hallways where they walked, a young man took the lives of 20 children and six faculty members.

The girls were born and raised within the Sandy Hook community. They were born there and estimate that since the time they left, the area has grown by only a few thousand people. It is, in essence, the same community now as the one they grew up in. It’s an idyllic place, a farming community with lots of rolling hills and a quaint Main Street – a place where people don’t worry about their children walking down to the corner park or to the $2 movies at night.

Sandy Hook is actually a small village within the limits of Newtown. The girls explained the small-town environment there.

“Newtown is the quintessential New England, Norman Rockwell town,” Kyle said. “There are no chain stores, except for a Subway sandwich shop. No one is afraid to let their kids out on the streets. I don’t remember any crime at all while growing up there.”

The girls’ father was a men’s clothing sales representative within the community, their mother was a substitute teacher at Newtown High School. The family stayed in that area for the whole of the girls’ education, but took every opportunity to vacation in Boca Grande. Their parents bought a home within the Boca Grande Club in 1986, and the family loved to visit their “second home.” Kyle and Cannon moved down to the island permanently two years ago.

“We’re proud to call Boca Grande home now,” Cannon said. “I think what drew us and my parents here was that similar small-town feel of Sandy Hook and Newtown.”

Kyle and Cannon still have many friends within that community. They know teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary, and last Friday the waiting was unbearable. Waiting to see if their friends were OK, and whose children came home safely.

To read more of this story pick up a Boca Beacon on newsstands today or click here to subscribe to our print or e-edition.View More images >>

( 0 Votes )