How Will The Year At Stoneman Douglas Be Immortalized? Two Yearbook Editors Explain Their Challenge

Three weeks soon following the horrific shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, the school is slowly picking up the pieces. Classes have resumed, benefit concerts have been suggested, and survivors have become activists. All of the while, the 30-plus members of the Stoneman Douglas yearbook, The Aerie, have been hard at work.

By the starting of February, they had filled over 400 pages and were on track to meet their March 9 deadline. Yet immediately following the shooting on February 14, they’ve had to change course fully, as they grapple with the challenge of covering a unbelievable tragedy in their book’s pages.

“The day immediately following the shooting happened, because the editor-in-chief, my only question was, ‘Holy cow, how in the world are we going to cover this?’” Kyra Parrow, a 18-year-old senior, told MTV News.

Courtesy Rain Valladares

Kyra Parrow (left) and Rain Valladares

Parrow has been on the Aerie personnel since her freshman year, and has worked her way up from a photographer to her current positions: co-photo editor and co-editor-in-chief. With each other with the yearbook’s other photo editor, 16-year-old junior Rain Valladares, she uses her camera to capture what it’s like being a student at Stoneman Douglas. That was a fairly sincere job a month ago, however right now, it couldn’t be more complex — or more important.

On the day of the shooting, Valladares was taking pictures for the yearbook throughout lunchtime. It was Valentine’s Day, and she wanted to capture the festive mood on campus. She took a couple pics of senior Emma Gonzalez — who, in the following days, would go on to be one of the country’s most visible gun violence prevention activists — handing out love proclamations at a table outdoor. Then she photographed her friend Tori Gonzalez, who was gleefully smiling while holding a pink bag with a candy rose in it: a Valentine’s gift for her boyfriend, Joaquin Oliver. That afternoon, Oliver was one of the 17 victims who was shot and killed indoor in the school.

Courtesy Rain Valladares

Valladares took this photo of Tori Gonzalez just hours before the shooting on February 14.

As soon as the shooting began a couple hours later, Valladares’s environmental statistics teacher led her and the rest of the class to a hidden area of the culinary room downstairs. There, a cluster of about 50 people, including three teachers, hid up until a SWAT team noticed them and escorted them to safety. Valladares was forced to leave her backpack — which had her camera indoor of it — on the culinary room floor, and wasn’t able to go back to the school and retrieve it up until 12 days later. It was then that she saw the pictures she had taken of Tori and the rest of her classmates on that Valentine’s Day afternoon.

“It hurt so bad to be able to see those photographs again,” Valladares mentioned. “It’s just crazy how, right now, our lives are divided into a before and an immediately after. These photographs are the before.”

Valladares didn’t visualize Tori again up until almost two weeks soon following the shooting. Once the two finally reunited at school, they hugged and cried, and Tori thanked Valladares for “capturing her happiest morning.”

“She mentioned that any time whenever she saw those pictures, reality finally set in for her: that things are never going to be the same,” Valladares recalled. “She needs those pictures. She deserves to know how she was before and think of that day and remember what it began out to be, and why much she loved [Oliver] and why much he loved her.”

The day soon following the shooting, co-editors Parrow and Valladeres went to Pine Trails Park for a candlelight vigil. It was there that they experienced what it seemed like capturing the aftermath of a tragedy, and witnessed firsthand the challenges of photographing people in a time of mourning and grief.

“One of my companions was shot and she happened to be there,” Parrow mentioned. “I hugged her and I was crying with her, and the media people were in my face with their cameras. I was like, ‘This can’t be happening!’ If I was around someone who was crying, my camera was on my shoulder, not in the position to take a picture. Because for me, I’m in their shoes as well. I’m grieving with my companions, and I knew I wouldn’t want that to be happening to me.”

Courtesy Kyra Parrow

Parrow pictures a close-up of a candle at the Pine Trails Park vigil on February 15.

Though Valladares's camera was locked up at school the day of the vigil, she also found the same tension between photographers and mourners.

“Everyone was a complete disaster, including me,” she mentioned. “There were photographers in people’s faces, and one lady began cursing this one [photographer] out. It made me question, because I want to do photojournalism, how would I approach this?”

That’s a dilemma both Parrow and Valladares are grappling with right now, as they face a monumental task: capturing their companions and peers on camera in the aftermath of a tragedy, and putting that into a yearbook that they’ll have for the rest of their lives.

“It’s certainly super, super hard,” Valladares mentioned. “Death is the most sensitive subject that anyone can ever talk about. It’s still a process [figuring out] how we’re going have the ability to do this in the ideal way possible.”

The Aerie is formatted in chronological group, covering “every little thing” that happens at Stoneman Douglas — from a baseball team that won a national championship several years back to the school's musical group winning at states this year to science fairs and plays — from August up until March. Parrow says that blueprint will still apply to the 2017-18 book because this life-altering tragedy isn't the only thing that defines their year.

“We don’t want the complete yearbook to be about the shooting, because we hope to show what [else] happened while in the school year,” Parrow mentioned. “But we do wish to give justice to our fallen classmates and our fallen coaches and teacher.”

The employees plans to devote an entire page to every one of the 17 victims, and they’ll also completely mask the school-wide trends they’ve seen in the aftermath of the shooting, like students getting tattoos and companions of Oliver’s dying their hair blond in his honor.

“Our biggest concern as a yearbook personnel is how we do justice to the victims,” Parrow explained. “All the victims are going to have their own pages and their stories are going to be written as a way to show who they were. Nick Dworet, as an example, got a scholarship to college for swimming, and people should know that about him. We wish to create ensure that as soon as people finish that book, they know who all 17 victims were, what their personalities were, what their accomplishments were.”

Courtesy Kyra Parrow

Parrow took this photo of Nick Dworet for the yearbook a couple weeks before the shooting.

She admits “there’s so much to do,” however the personnel has at least been graced with some much-needed time. Their original deadline was on March 9, yet the book’s publisher, Walsworth Publishing Corporation, reached out right following the shooting to assure them that all of their deadlines have been forgiven and nothing is due nevertheless. Still, they’re feeling the pressure of getting the book — which is now at a whopping 449 pages, compared to last year’s 416 — just right.

“I wouldn’t mention it’s a burden, nevertheless it’s certainly a heavy thing on our shoulders,” Parrow mentioned. “When this book goes out, all 3,000 students are going to want this yearbook. Each and every faculty member is going to want this yearbook. The full community is going to want this yearbook. It’s going to be all eyes on this yearbook.”

Valladares agreed, adding, “There’s habitually little mistakes here and there in the yearbook and we routinely get criticized for it, even if it’s just a little thing. Yet we can’t do that this year. Everyone’s purchasing yearbooks now; each person wants to know what we’re going to do and why we’re going to do it. There’s pressure, however we have a responsibility.”

Each year, the award-winning Aerie has a theme that carries while in the book. Last year, it was “Long Story Short,” and the two years’ prior to that, it was “Exposure” and “Legacy,” respectively. The theme is chosen by the employees an entire year in advance, meaning this year’s was determined back in the spring of 2017. That chosen theme? “As One.”

“It’s strange and crazy,” Parrow mentioned about the theme, which has taken on a whole new meaning throughout the past couple weeks. “It’s certainly a wonderful theme to have to go through something like this. We couldn’t have picked a more brilliant one, really.”

In the wake of the shooting, the students have come to embody their incredibly poignant theme. “Before everything, we were delighted of ourselves,” Valladares added. "We’re very involved, and it’s a very upbeat school. Right now, we’re just coming with each other and showing unity and appreciation and gratitude. And pride: that’s the hugest word.”

Parrow and the rest of the employees plan to show "every single aspect of light and love that's happened soon after February 14. The team will concentrate on the words "As One" and tie it into the sense of community at Douglas, which was strong before, although is unbreakable now.

For five ways you could take action on gun violence, head over to Everytown.Org.