Recalling Obama going to Sandy Hook

photo was taken by Pete Souza, chief official White House photographer for Barack Obama. The image was actually taken on Dec. 16. The shooting occurred on Dec. 14. Here’s what Souza had to say about the photo:


This is two days after the shootings and they had planned this public memorial service. But before that, they had all the families gathered in different rooms and he went and spent I think it was three hours with all of these families. And then he came back into this classroom...and not only is he going over his notes, he is rewriting parts of his talk that he was going to give at this memorial service to incorporate what he had just experienced during those three hours visiting with these families. I was struck by that classroom and the messiness of it, and that's why I backed off to try to give people a wider sense of him alone in this room.