Mrs. Janene Kessler, Band Teacher and Highland Park resident

Like Metz, Band Director Mrs. Janene Kessler and her family were excited to attend the Fourth of July celebration following the pandemic. 

That excitement quickly turned into fear as Kessler realized someone had opened fire during the parade.

“I first heard the gunshots as the Highland Park High School Marching Band was marching by. I don’t even think I heard them at first because the drums were right next to me, and it sounded like drums,” she said.

Kessler and her family escaped safely, taking cover in stores like Anthropologie in Downtown Highland Park. As they got to their parked car, Kessler noticed a group of band members hiding behind a corner of a church across the street. 

“I stopped, I had to go help them. I was trying to calm the kids down, but I looked up and saw my daughter in the car, in tears,” she said Kessler. 

Kessler felt conflicted as a teacher and mother: “I wanted to help the Highland Park students, but I didn’t want to traumatize my daughter more than she already was.”

Kessler’s own son is a part of the Highland Park High School Band, though he was away at summer camp during the shooting. She says one of the most challenging moments of the tragic day was looking at the text messages from her son’s friends to his iPad, which he left at home. 

“We were just sitting in shock at home [after the shooting], and I could hear the pinging from my son’s iPad,” she said. “It was heartbreaking to see his friends texting each other things like ‘are you alive?’ Kids shouldn’t have to go through that.”

As a result of the tragedy, Kessler believes that her roles as a mother and teacher have shifted. 

“I put myself in their shoes, thinking ‘gosh what if that was my band.’ We perform out in the community, we do things all over the place, so I think, what would I do in a situation like this?” she said. 

Earlier this school year, Kessler and the LFHS Band attended a football game to support the Highland Park High School band. Since the shooting, she says her situational awareness has increased and “made [her] much more aware” when traveling with students or playing in public. 

“Both as a parent, as a teacher, and just as a human being, it’s a horrible thing to see young people have to go through that,” said Kessler. 

Kessler says that she isn’t afraid to be near where the shooting took place. However, she is still constantly reminded of the images of “a tsunami of people” and “police force amassing in full tactical gear,” even just by driving every day to school. 

“It was hard to reconcile that with being in Highland Park, being in my hometown,” she said. “It was really striking.” 

As a survivor, Kessler wants people to understand the lasting trauma that continues to haunt victims of the shooting.

“I was unharmed, I was safe, and I was really lucky. But the trauma is something that is collective,” she said. 

Kessler also believes that society should take a deeper look into the survivor stories in the wake of mass shootings, which have become increasingly normalized in the US. 

“We hear in the news that seven people are killed and many are injured, but the effect is so much broader,” she said.

Kessler also still sees the impacts of gun violence on her daughter, who is only six years old. 

“My daughter is still having nightmares. She’s afraid to go to school, she’s afraid to be alone, she’s afraid of so many things that she wasn’t afraid of before,” Kessler said. 

“To think that our entire community, and all these kids are going through that, it’s going to be a long road ahead.”