Now the stained glass will be a central metaphor of her speech at graduation ceremonies Saturday. Martin, who will head to St. John's College in Annapolis, Md., in the fall, is one of several students selected to speak at the event at Fiddler's Green. She first heard the story last March when she and Lauren Townsend and other members of their Advanced Placement English class visited England as part of a class trip. Citizens came together and decided that each person would take home one piece of the precious glass and hide it so it would be safe if the Germans invaded. After the war, they reunited and put all the pieces back together.
Light pouring into the chapel once again illuminates the stories told in the glass.
It is still possible to see the lines where the pieces were taken apart. Now, following the shootings at Columbine that took the lives of Martin's classmate Townsend and her good friend Cassie Bernall, Martin said she has come to realize deeper meanings in that story. Townsend and Bernall were among 12 students and a teacher gunned down on April 20 by two students who then took their own lives. We are the windows, and through each of us is reflected our experience and what we make of that. When all the pieces are brought together, it is then that the whole picture is seen.