SANDY HOOK SURVIVORS GRADUATE 'The Sorrow Has to Live Within the Joy'

THEY WERE FIRST GRADERS WHEN A GUNMAN MURDERED 20 CLASSMATES. NOW THEY'RE ENTERING YOUNG ADULTHOOD FOREVER CHANGED BUT READY TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE

- LIZ MCNEIL, K. C. BAKER and WENDY GROSSMAN KANTOR

They still remember the sweet anticipation of that winter day-before the gunshots started. "I was super excited to go to school. We were going to make gingerbread houses," says Lilly Wasilnak, 18, who was a first grader at Sandy Hook Elementary. "Then I remember banging that we thought was from roof work they had been doing." As the noises continued, Principal Dawn Hochsprung came over the intercom, warning everyone to get to their safe spots. "We hid in our cubbies. I think all of us knew we were in danger," recalls Grace Fischer, Lilly's classmate. By the time they left the building, through halls lined with police officers, "half our grade was missing," Grace, now 18, says.

Nearly 12 years after 20 first graders and six educators were murdered in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012-marking another tragic milestone in America's history of mass shootings-the surviving students are entering young adulthood. Five dozen of them graduated from Newtown High School on June 12 in a celebratory ceremony threaded with loss.

Each victim's name was read from the stage, and grads wore small green ribbons on their gowns reading "Forever in Our Hearts." Says Ella Seaver, 18: "You are looking for the people who aren't there." The aftershocks from the massacre, like the debate over solutions to gun violence, have not ended. "I just really want things to be different," says Henry Terifay, 18. Adds Lilly: "For a long time, I was thinking, 'Why did they die and I didn't?' I learned to turn that around and think, 'How can I make sure that another girl's best friend doesn't die?"" Here, eight Sandy Hook survivors several of whom have joined the Jr.

Newtown Action Alliance to make schools safer-and four parents whose children were killed reflect on their unimaginable loss and what's ahead.

"As long as their memory is alive with us," Lilly says, "we're not done."