FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ After the carnage that took 17 lives at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School one year ago, few in the halls and classrooms of the Parkland school walked away with the toxic mix of emotions that weigh on Ernie Rospierski.
The 37-year-old social studies teacher lost six students he considered his own that day as gunfire ricocheted around him through the hallway chaos on the third floor of Building 12. It might have been more had Rospierski, with an 18-month-old son at home, not put himself between the shooter and the students, sending them fleeing toward a stairwell exit.
Grazed by two bullets, the burly former rugby player then pressed himself against the stairwell door, denying the gunman's attempts to open it as Rospierski watched the last students help a seriously injured friend down the final steps to safety. No more children were shot that day.
"Ernie Rospierski is an unsung hero," said the chairman of the state commission investigating the MSD shooting.
Rospierski does not allow himself that title, his memory of what transpired outside Room 1249 a storm of conflicting emotions. He reluctantly accepts the satisfaction of having helped most of the students with him reach safety, something he says any Douglas teacher would have done.
But this is balanced by regret at having forgotten his keys when the door locked behind him during what he thought was a fire drill, trapping Rospierski and his students outside the shelter of their classroom. Some were shot and killed while huddled in the alcove by the door, others while trying to run. When he held the stairwell door, as the gunman peered through the glass and jiggled the handle, one of his students lay mortally wounded at Rospierski's feet.
And yet, somehow, he has reached a standoff with the darkest elements of the nightmare. Despite having to walk past a fenced-off Building 12 each day, through passages once sealed by police tape, seeing the faces of students and faculty who also witnessed bloodshed, Rospierski has been able to rekindle the optimism that has made him such a popular teacher at the school.
"Is it something that I've played over in my head? Yeah, a couple of times. But I've also been very careful to avoid the what-ifs. Dealing with what happened is enough as it is," Rospierski says. "That stuff, from that day, is never gonna leave me. And I'm OK with that. I've made my peace with that stuff."
