A decade later, NIU shooting survivors try to reclaim normalcy
CHICAGO - On Monday morning, Laurel Dubowski brought out the three full-size photo albums and a scrapbook, all the sympathy cards and letters people wrote in those early years. Her husband, Joe, estimated he was looking at 500 pieces on the dining room table.
It is a tricky exercise for the Dubowskis - taking in that outpouring of sorrow, sympathy and support while trying to move on from the day 10 years ago when a gunman dressed in black stormed the stage of their daughter's lecture hall at Northern Illinois University and killed her.
He killed five people that afternoon, wounded about 20 others, then turned the gun on himself.
"We're finally at the point in our lives where we have the house to ourselves and have a little time to go through it," Joe Dubowski said. "It's challenging because even though we still have it and haven't gone through it, this is like re-experiencing the whole thing again."
The couple planned to pare down the collection.
"I need to live in today," Dubowski said, "and is keeping all
