Candlelight Vigil Planned in Fort Lee After Connecticut School Shooting

A candlelight vigil in Fort Lee’s Monument Park will take place Monday, Dec. 17 at 7 p.m. The vigil is being held in light of the mass shooting Friday in Newtown, Conn. that left 20 school children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School dead.

Touted by organizers as a “gathering to give and receive comfort in light of the Newtown shooting,” the Monument Park vigil will provide Fort Lee residents an opportunity to “share with neighbors,” pray or be silent. It will also include a “message from Fort Lee to Newtown,” according to a flyer being distributed around town, although the physical form that message will take remained unclear, as organizers scrambled to plan the vigil.

“Our idea is simple,” said Rev. Allison Moore of Fort Lee’s Church of the Good Shepherd in an email to fellow Fort Lee clergy members and community leaders Saturday. “Some scripture common to Jews and Christians, time for people to talk with each other about what is most fearful and comforting, some way for people here to write something to people in Newtown [and] maybe music.”  

People “of all faiths, and none” are invited to attend, according vigil organizers.

The candlelight vigil starts at 7 p.m. Monday, but anyone who wants to help lead the event is asked to arrive at Monument Park, located at the corner of Palisade Avenue and Angioletti Place in Fort Lee, by 6:30 p.m.