I was spending the summer interning in Indianapolis when a shooter walked into the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando and shot and killed 49 people. I had never felt farther from home. Here’s an excerpt.
A friend told me that souls are not tethered to physical locations, but I disagree. The blood that runs through my veins follows an Orlando-shaped map. My body, and my heart, were grown, both as a child and an adult, on Orlando’s streets.
My family has called Central Florida home since the 1970s and the people I love most in this world also reside there. It pains me that I am not able to be in Orlando right now, holding my loved ones’ hands or standing in line at a blood bank, doing what I can to make sense out of the senseless, out of this tragedy.
It was cold. It was wet. So wet that my flimsy cotton gloves ended up tossed aside, heavy and damp.
With numb fingers, I pushed myself closer to the crest of the tiny hill for one last ride.
On Thursday, just barely two months before I turn 30, I went sledding for the first time.
Times Free Press education reporter Meghan Mangrum (right) interviews students on the first day of school at Chattanooga Preparatory School in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The all-boys public charter school celebrated its second year with a welcome celebration on Aug. 1, 2019, that included hundreds of community members cheering on the students as they entered the building for the start of the new school year. Daniel “D.J.” Jackson (center), a rising seventh grader, was featured in a previous story Mangrum wrote about the school. Read more about Chattanooga Preparatory School. (Staff Photo by Robin Rudd/Times Free Press)
Reporter Meghan Mangrum (left) snaps a picture of Bear (right) as his owner, Sam Brinson, shows off his new bike trailer for Bear after eating a Thanksgiving lunch at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen on Thursday, Nov. 22, 2018, in Chattanooga, Tenn. Brinson is unhoused and often frequents the community kitchen for a meal or a shower while Bear waits outside. Mangrum met the duo just days earlier at the city’s ‘Gratefull Chattanooga’ community potluck. (Staff photo by Doug Strickland/Times Free Press)
Gov. Bill Lee (left) answers questions from the media during a visit to Gestamp Inc. in Chattanooga, Tenn. on Feb. 1, 2019. This was Gov. Lee’s first visit to Chattanooga as Governor of Tennessee. Times Free Press opinion editor Clint Cooper and business reporter Mike Pare (center) take notes while education reporter Meghan Mangrum (center foreground) questions Lee. (Staff photo by Doug Strickland/Times Free Press)
Tyner Academy Principal Gerald Harris and Times Free Press education reporter Meghan Mangrum (right) cautiously walk down a rutted earthen mound that serves as the south end of Bob Evans Stadium in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Tyner Academy Principal Gerald Harris gave the Times Free Press a tour of the school’s facilities on Dec. 6, 2019, as part of Mangrum’s deep dive into the state of Hamilton County Schools’ facilities examining how the district racked up $1.36 billion in capital maintenance needs.Read the three-part series here.(Staff Photo by Robin Rudd/Times Free Press)
Digital producer Kiara Green and education reporter Megham Mangrum prepare to interview Karen Neal, a fifth-grade teacher at Gibert Elementary School in Lafayette, Georgia on November 14, 2019. Neal was selected as one of The Chattanooga Times Free Press’ Teacher of the Month, an audience engagement initiative spearheaded by Mangrum to recognize and celebrate local educators across Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia. Read more about Neal and the Teacher of the Month series here.(Staff Photo by Robin Rudd/Times Free Press)
Education reporter Meghan Mangrum poses for photojournalist Josie Norris at Metro Nashville Public Schools’ Central Office building in Nashville, Tenn. ahead of an interview with MNPS Superintendent Adrienne Battle. Mangrum profiled the district’s first Black female superintendent at the end of her first year at the helm of Tennessee’s second-largest and most diverse school district. Read that profile and view more of Norris’ portraits here.(Staff photo by Josie Norris/The Tennessean)
Meghan Mangrum 