Then the families started arriving. Parents, grandparents, siblings and other kin of some of the 22 people killed last year at Robb Elementary streamed into the park, embracing the Olivers and each other.
The Olivers had driven halfway across the country to Uvalde with their own story: The couple’s son, Joaquin, was one of the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., five years ago.
The Olivers came to Texas one day last month to find others who also understand what their lives had become and to work with them to prevent such tragedies from happening again.
Thus, they boarded the souped-up bus on which a large inscription stands out: Stop Gun Violence.
“I’m looking to help and also to receive help,” Mr. Oliver said. “We all know that we exist. What if we start planning together? What if we can support each other?”
As mass shootings continue to erupt through schools, malls and entertainment venues across the country, a growing league of families have found themselves bound to one another by unfathomable grief.
The Olivers set off this summer to travel the country in a retrofitted school bus, stopping to remember victims in two dozen places that have attained a painful notoriety. Among them: Littleton, Colo. (13 killed in 1999); Aurora, Colo. (12 killed in 2012); Charleston, S.C. (nine killed in 2015); Orlando, Fla. (49 killed in 2016); Las Vegas (58 killed in 2017) and Nashville (six killed this year).
In the coming weeks, their stops will include visits to Newtown, Conn. (26 killed in 2012), then the United Nations in New York and the Capitol in Washington.
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