Kindness marks Sandy Hook anniversary

People can honor the dead through unselfish actions, said Monte E. Frank, a board member of the Newtown Action Alliance, which has been lobbying Congress for tighter gun controls.

Frank read a letter from Newtown First Selectman Patricia Llodra in support of the weeklong acts of charity.

"In Newtown, we believe that there is no greater gift of love than to perform acts of kindness in the honors of those whose lives were taken away," Llodra wrote.

The first anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings, in which 20 children and six adults were murdered, is Saturday.

Frank said U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-Conn., and Blumenthal have spent a great deal of time in Newtown, helping to lead the community out of "its darkest time."

Frank said Newtown will prove its strength by refusing to let the murders define it.

"While we can't bring back our 20 children and six educators from Newtown, or the more than 30,000 other victims of gun violence over the past year alone, and we certainly can't fathom the pain that all of these families, we can honor them through action," he said.

Blumenthal and Frank were joined by Esty, members of the Newtown Foundation, state United Way President Richard Porth and Tyrek Marquez, a young survivor of a Hartford shooting. On Wednesday, families from around the country, including Marquez and others from Connecticut, will rally in Washington, D.C.

"I can't erase the pain -- and I wish I could -- of what we felt in the firehouse that day," Esty recalled of the morning of the murders last Dec. 14. "The pain that those families and that that community has to live with is beyond our ability to imagine. But the pain is shared by countless others around the country."