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Mar 08, 2012 | Mary Frances Schjonberg

School Offers Counseling as Details of Shooter's Life Emerge

[Episcopal News Service] In the wake of the March 6 murder-suicide at Episcopal School of Jacksonville, Florida, officials have opened the campus to students, faculty and staff seeking counseling and comfort.

 

A public memorial service for slain Head of School Dale Regan is planned at 11 a.m. March 9 in the school’s Campion Courtyard between Parks and Lastinger Halls, two classroom buildings whose construction she oversaw two years ago. There will be a public viewing at a local funeral home the evening prior.

 

Regan, 63, died hours after she had been involved in firing Shane Schumerth, 28, a Spanish teacher at the school. He returned to campus with an AK-47 in a guitar case, went to her office and shot Regan several times before killing himself, according to the Jacksonville Sheriff’s office.

 

Regan had been at Episcopal for 34 years, teaching English before she became head of school.

 

“Dale has devoted her entire life to this school as a teacher and administrator,” said Rob Clements, chairman of the school’s board of trustees, and the Very Rev. Kate Moorehead, dean of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Jacksonville and trustee vice-chair, in a statement on the school’s website.

 

“Without Dale’s determination and passion for students and teaching, where Parks and Lastinger Halls now stand would just be empty space. Instead, the future of Episcopal and excellence in teaching and learning stands supported by brick and white columns, but more importantly, it houses new ways of learning, technology for today’s student, and an environment that challenges teachers to be their best,” they said.

 

Moorehead, in a telephone interview with Episcopal News Service March 7, said that Regan “had a wonderful combination of gentleness, wisdom and fortitude; she was a very strong woman and a visionary, but also could be a counselor.”

 

Florida officials and citizens, many of them Episcopal alumni, immediately issued statements about the shooting and posted tributes on news websites, blogs and Twitter, as well as on the school’s Facebook page.

 

“She could help you before you even knew what your unique gifts were, because she did,” Doug Walker, executive director of the Diocese of Florida Foundation, who worked with Regan when he served as the school’s director of institutional advancement, told the Times-Union.

 

Click here to read more at Episcopal News Service.