PORT ANGELES — Under a canvas awning sheltering the family and close friends of Joe Rogers, the boy’s father laid his arms on the light green casket and brought his forehead down to touch its shiny surface.
After a moment, Tom Rogers straightened and moved into the embrace of family members as a knot of adults and children pressed forward and placed colorful flowers on top of Joe’s casket.
Inside the casket, Joe’s mother had placed his fishing pole and vest.
There are no answers to explain the tragic death of a boy as young as Joseph Franklin Rogers, the Rev. Mel Wilson said at Saturday’s graveside service.
So instead of searching for answers, more than a hundred family members, friends and classmates gathered in the lush grass at Mount Angeles Memorial Park near Port Angeles to remember a kind, blond-haired 13-year-old who put his all into the things he did and loved to catch the biggest fish.
Joe, a seventh-grader at Crescent School in Joyce, shot himself in the chest with a .22-caliber three-quarter length rifle last Wednesday morning in the back of a classroom where his teacher and 18 other students — the entire seventh grade — were having language arts class.
Joe had carried the rifle to school inside his guitar case, pointed it at no one but himself, and uttered only his teacher’s name — “Mrs. Hibbard” — before shooting himself.
Those who knew him say he was a happy boy from a loving family, making it so hard to understand why he would kill himself.
His death has stunned the small community of Joyce where, like Joe, most children start Crescent School as preschoolers.
Under the afternoon’s bright sky, groups of children close to Joe’s age stood among the gravestones, some with tears overflowing, others with faces set hard and firm, many with hands dug deep into the pockets of blue jeans.
Adults gathered among them, offering gentle hugs to their children or embracing each other.