The Amish responded to the Nickel Mines school massacre in the same way they deal with other forms of adversity —- quietly, maturely and responsibly. Unlike school shootings in other, more urban settings, the Amish community issued no clarion call for grief counselors to flood the area, hold their children's hands and serve as surrogate parents, and then submit large hourly fee statements to the school system. The Amish counseled their own children in their own way, as they have done for generations —- with prayer, parental love and sibling comfort.

The Amish, who do not believe in graven images but rather evince deep respect for simple structures and messages, constructed no makeshift shrines of the sort that crop up in other communities across America where tragedy strikes. No Mylar balloons imprinted with canned, commercial messages of faux grief were to be found; nor was there a run on pink teddy bears from the local Wal-Mart with which to create mounds of tacky toys as some bizarre expression of communal grief transference.

[...]

Apparently, the Amish elders gave no thought whatsoever to calling for a commission to conduct a feasible study of how best to create an appropriate edifice to recall and relive the tragedy of Oct. 2 for the entire nation. More importantly, perhaps, I suspect not one Amish citizen in that rural Pennsylvania community harbored a moment's thought about how many taxpayer dollars could or should be earmarked for such a monument.

[...]

No studies, no commissions, no rush to blame, no taxpayer dollars, no piles of dolls and balloons, no grief counselors, no monuments. Instead, reserved reflection steeped in private grief, public forgiveness and overarching reverence for continuing to live in what they view as God's vision and image, are the hallmarks of the Amish response to a tragedy that would surely break the back of weaker communities.