• by February 4, 2005

JEWELS IN THE ROUGH - Until this week, the worst thing that had happened to our town was when our local movie theater went out of business. The movie house's name was the Community Theater and for months its marquee brandished the foreboding coming attraction: "Community For Sale."

Thankfully, that proved not to be the case. A local non-profit group took it over and now throngs of families and young couples fill its musty seats each weekend to catch the second theatrical window of recent Hollywood releases - and the occasional independent film - at discounted prices. The ushers, concession workers, and ticket-sellers are volunteers who work for tip money to buy pizza each night.

Like any town, we have our squirmishes, and the occasional incivility. But the biggest battles are usually fought in zoning board meetings, not on the streets. In fact, the last time we even made the local TV news due to violence, was because a fistfight had broken out on the field during one of our high school's sporting events.

All in all, it's a pretty nice town, and about as close as you can get to living a bucolic life and still have a job that requires commuting into Media Town.

But that changed this week, when down the block from the Community Theater, and across the street from the town gazebo where bands play concerts to old-timers on sleepy summer nights, the unimaginable happened, and suddenly our fair town was thrown into the national crime blotter, the New York tabloid press, and evening newscasts.

A husband and wife were mercilessly gunned down in the local jewelry shop that their family had owned for years. They were so nice, that oftentimes they wouldn't charge locals who stopped in to have a piece of jewelry fixed that they hadn't even bought in the shop.

The shop itself was so inconspicuous that when we first heard the news, our reaction was, "We have a jewelry store?" It's not inconspicuous any more with its storefront emblazoned on New York TV news shows next to the image of a suspect police believe to have committed the murders, and a rash of similar crimes in the area.

"Such nice people," the waitress told us while we dined in a local pizza establishment. A crew of burly young men came bustling in for a table. "News 12," she whispered to us knowingly.

By next week, the camera crews will be gone. The bales of flowers adorning the front of the jewelry shop will begin to wither. And the next time we see its storefront on TV will be when either another town's jeweler becomes a victim, or the killer is apprehended. Eventually, the media images will begin to fade, but not their memory. They heal, but the scars remain.

Timothy and Kimberly Donnelly, rest in peace.