School mourns sisters

Eyes were bloodshot red. Voices choked with grief. And two little girls, sisters 18 months apart who looked like twins, were remembered at Oak Hill School Thursday for having “the brightest lips and the bluest eyes,” for their endlessly inquisitive natures, their impish grins and their passion for everything purple and pink.

“Aidan and Eryn are purple and pink perfection,” said teacher Mary Ellen Arbuckle, who taught both Aidan and Eryn Rauscher when they were in first grade.

“They will be forever remembered as angels flying in and out of the art room. And bringing an extra touch of cute to everything they did.”

Arbuckle spoke at a candlelight vigil organized by parents and Oak Hill school board members for the two slain girls. The event was attended by about 200 students, parents and staff members.

Aidan, 9, and Eryn, 7, were shot to death Sunday by their father, Richard Rauscher, who then took his own life at his home south of Junction City, according to the Lane County Sheriff’s Office.

The bodies were discovered Monday after the girl’s mother, Jennifer Rauscher, called authorities when she learned that the girls did not show for school that morning.

The days since have been a time of unimaginable shock and grief for the Oak Hill School community, a small, private K-12 school of just 125 students, nestled on a hillside on the east side of Lane Community College.

“This is a shocking, senseless act,” Oak Hill Headmaster Elliott Grey said after the vigil. “A tragic act. Your mind wants to make sense of it.”

Grey said he thought all day Thursday about what to say at the vigil.

“It was going to be an angry speech,” Grey told those who gathered for the vigil. “I was going to talk about being robbed.”

But he said he then received a phone call from Jennifer Rauscher, who, along with other family members, did not attend the evening vigil.

“And Jennifer talked about the love and caring that her family is receiving at this time,” Grey said. “She talked about how special her daughters were, and how this school helped to make them that way. And she asked that we model that behavior. And I decided to change my speech.

“She asked that we remember Aidan and Eryn as the incredible people that they were,” Grey said, his voice catching again and again.

The hour-long vigil began with music teacher Debi Noel softly playing a flute, as attendees followed holding burning white candles. She led them through the campus, along a path that led to a playground under a large oak tree. There were 50 folding chairs in front of a podium adorned on either side by tall vases of pink and purple flowers. There were two large, framed photos of the girls, their eyes sparkling blue, their hair light brown and slightly wavy, the bridges of their noses dotted with freckles.

There was a long banner, signed by all the students, that said, “We Love You Aidan and Eryn!” There were two school desks, side by side, topped by the two girls’ crayons and books and a paper on “Wormology.”

A slideshow played in the background, showing the girls on swings, on horseback, doing school projects with classmates, dressed for Halloween last year.

Shannon Poynter, chairwoman of the Oak Hill school board, described the girls as “two angels stolen too soon.”

“An event like this is incomprehensible,” she said. “We cannot understand this. We will never understand why. But we can take those unanswered questions and listen. We can hug, and we can support one another.”

As Arbuckle spoke on behalf of the teaching staff, about a dozen or so educators who all stood behind her, she shared her memories of each girl.

Eryn, a third-grader this year, loved to laugh, she said. When something struck her as really funny, a high-pitched screeching laugh came out of her, a chortle her classmates loved to imitate until everyone was doing the same laugh, Arbuckle said.

“It is a sound that I will always hear when I think of her,” she said.

Noel, the music teacher, recalled how, as second-graders took the stage last year for a school play, one child became very nervous. But Eryn reassured her by saying in a voice loud enough for all the audience to hear: “Oh, it’s no problem. Just picture all the audience is in their underwear.”

Another staff member spoke of how someone was alarmed this week when they heard her screaming on campus. But the staff member said she was just imitating Aidan’s “screaming joy.”

“Because that’s the way she was when she learned something new; her eyes would just light up,” the staff member said. As an example, she recalled the time Aidan, who began fourth grade this year, did a paper on one of Chief Seattle’s speeches, and how it so excited her that she couldn’t wait to take it home and share it with her parents.

“It was just pure love,” the staff member said, her voice breaking. “It was just in her heart.”

A private family memorial for the girls will be held at the school on Saturday. A memorial fund has been established in their names to raise money for Oak Hill students who need financial aid. Remembrances may also be made to FOOD for Lane County or the Greenhill Humane Society.