Film on 2006 massacre stirs talk among Amish

NICKLE MINES, Pa. (RNS) In the movie, the winding Lancaster County roads, the hay in the barn and even the men’s black boots are squeaky clean, not soiled with the mud and manure that are accoutrements of Amish life. In the movie, the women have skillfully arched eyebrows; the men manicured fingernails that bear no […]

NICKLE MINES, Pa. (RNS) In the movie, the winding Lancaster County roads, the hay in the barn and even the men’s black boots are squeaky clean, not soiled with the mud and manure that are accoutrements of Amish life.


In the movie, the women have skillfully arched eyebrows; the men manicured fingernails that bear no trace of farm chores. Their handsome faces are void of the weathering from wind and sun.

And in the movie, the unfathomable horror that played out here on the morning of Monday, Oct. 2, 2006, when a lone gunmen entered the sanctity of a one-room school house and slaughtered the innocents, is sanitized.

Not a single gunshot is fired. Not a drop of blood is shed.

Yet, for all its fictionalization and inconsistencies, “Amish Grace,” a Lifetime Movie Network film scheduled to air March 28 will undoubtedly draw viewers to their TVs to satisfy their fascination with the Amish and the universal longing for a simple way of life.

Those hit hardest and closest to home, however, deem the movie inappropriate.

“We’re not happy. It’s not something we want to be a part of,” said one of the Amish women who works at the Georgetown Cafe, keeping with the Amish custom of not being identified in the media. “We were too close to it. We were part of it, being Amish and all.”

Rita Rhoads, however, had stronger sentiments.

“To fictionalize a tragedy like that, I think, its not appropriate,” said Rhoads, a Lancaster County nurse midwife who delivered two of the girls who were killed in the shooting, and who maintains close contacts with the families.

“The families know about it and they don’t like it,” she said. “It’s all anyone is talking about.”

Based on the book “Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy,” by Donald B. Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt and David L. Weaver-Zercher, the movie has become fodder for casual conversation just about everywhere in Nickel Mines.

The book’s publisher, Jossey-Bass, owned the rights to the book and sold them to the movie’s producer. The authors, however, have distanced themselves from the project.


“Out of respect to our friends in the Amish community and especially those related to the Nickel Mines tragedy we declined the producer’s requests to consult and assist in the development of a film,” the authors said in a statement.

Their share from the sale of film rights will go to a nonprofit organization to benefit their ministries to children suffering because of poverty, war, and natural disaster, the statement said.

Four years after the fact, as groups of Amish students walked home from school, lunch pails in hand, the idea of a movie is too hard to take.

“It hurts to even talk about it,” said Elizabeth Wilson, whose son-in-law was among the first to respond to the schoolhouse the day of the shooting. “It’s hurt enough,” she said.

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The film has generated criticism for having taken some creative liberties.

The fictional local TV news reporter, for instance, is incredulous that the Amish visited the gunmen’s widow to express condolences and offer forgiveness. That, in fact, was the topic of several real-life media op-ed pieces.

And, wrought with the pain of losing her daughter, Ida Graber, one of the fictional Amish mothers and lead character, questions her faith and contemplates leaving.


“I can’t stand this place anymore,” Graber, played by Kimberly Williams-Paisley, lashes out at her husband.

That theme would offend his Amish friends, said Brad Igou, president of the Amish Experience, which offers a popular tour of Amish country. It’s simply “so far off base from what happened,” he said.

“It gives the impression that something like this could cause a person of Amish faith — or any other faith — to lose their faith,” he said. “And of course what happened in Nickel Mines was that faith was what got them through it.”

The movie’s characters weren’t literal depictions, but composites of characters and personalities culled during extensive research for the film, said Tanya Lopez, senior vice president of original movies for Lifetime.

In effect, the TV reporter represented a composite of the media and millions of Americans captivated by the story, many of whom wondered how the Amish could forgive such a grave act of evil.

“We didn’t want anyone to assume … ‘Oh that must be Irene, or so and so,”‘ Lopez said. “It is a composite character based on conversations with the authors of the book.”


Lopez said Lifetime decided to make the film after she and several other executives read the book.

“We really felt this was a message we wanted to put out there,” she said. “Given the fact that so much goes on in this world that is incredibly tragic, how was this community able to do it? There are things we can learn from the Amish that will help in our daily lives.”

Ultimately, the final arbiters of attempts to understand and even fictionalize the Amish are the Amish themselves.

Tourists and Hollywood often get it wrong, said James Bollinger, education director at The Heritage Center of Lancaster County because “attempts to portray the Amish never really live up to real life — despite best intentions,” he said.

“They seem to play up to people’s stereotypes of how the Amish should be,” he said, “rather than how they are.”

(Ivey DeJesus writes for The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa.)

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