I was really pissed off at Gavin Buckley, just six months into his job as mayor of Annapolis.
It was July 2018, and my wife and I were driving to a funeral, one of five for friends we attended that month. A gunman killed them all days earlier when he stormed our newsroom and opened fire.
Buckley called to talk about having a party.
“I remember you being mad,” he said Monday, the start of his final week as mayor.
It wasn’t really a party. It was grander — a concert to bring Annapolis together, to mourn victims of the Capital Gazette newsroom murders, support the survivors and strive for a moment of something normal.
“I wanted to raise money so that the people who were affected by it had some money to just go away on a holiday,” Buckley said. “That’s how it was working, in my mind.
“I also did it for Annapolis, because Annapolis needed somewhere to go, right? They needed to show their love and, in my view, that was a vehicle for it.”
I’ve talked to Buckley plenty of times. But, after eight years of interviews, I wanted one more hour of his time as mayor.
I wanted to talk about the day terror came to Annapolis.
On that day and those that followed, Buckley demonstrated a trait not always present in elected officials. He put himself out front of the response to tragedy, and he’s done it again and again.
He helped create a candlelight vigil and paid for some survivors to attend a concert. He collaborated on memorials to the victims, most recently dedicating part of Rowe Boulevard in their names.
And here’s the thing: The shooting was outside city limits. He didn’t have to do any of it.
“I’m so proud of it. Weren’t you?” Buckley said. “I was like, this is the place that we live. And look at this. This place has a heart. It’s not, not a Republican or Democrat thing.
“It made us more human. I guess it’s like that time around 9/11, where we all just came together. I think it was our 9/11, because you wouldn’t think something like that would happen.”
I know where I was when the shootings started, in an Ocean City condo. I grew up there, so it’s not my first choice to vacation. My wife and I won a week’s stay in a charity raffle, and that family trip saved my life.
Buckley was in a meeting at City Hall with community leaders unhappy with the police chief. The city manager walked in and whispered that The Capital — the newspaper’s name has since changed — was under attack.
Like many, he thought it was the state Capitol down the street. Then it hit him.
“The first thing I thought about was you, because I had just spoken to you 30 minutes before,” he said. “I knew you were in Ocean City, but I didn’t, in that moment, realize it.
“Because you know, you were the newspaper, right? So, and then, you sort of get your thoughts together, and I think our people were calling you.”
Lots of people were, because I was the editor at the time. It was a long drive to Annapolis, where it seemed like every police officer and firefighter in the world was waiting.
Those 300 first responders came from every agency, but it was an Annapolis officer, Wesley Callow, who arrested the gunman.
Buckley was there, too. He was in the background, deferring to the county executive and governor at the time, Steve Schuh and Larry Hogan.
Both were supportive but stepped away from the issue central to Buckley’s response.
“Republican administrations want gun issues to go away, right?” Buckley said. “I’m not saying there was any insensitivity. They were all sensitive, and I never heard a bad word from the governor or the county executive. I just think that they’re not comfortable in that space.”
After taking office in December 2017, Buckley joined a coalition of mayors against gun violence. It was the first thing he signed in office.
“We’re the only country in the world where kids do active shooter drills and hide behind their desks or run to the closets, and there’s something wrong with that,” he said.
Days before the murders, Buckley joined the city’s first active shooter drill. Among the journalists covering it was Wendi Winters, who died in the real shooting along with Rob Hiaasen, Gerald Fischman, John McNamara and Rebecca Smith.
“How could it ever happen in Annapolis? That’s how I felt.”
What came next were the news cameras, lots of them. Buckley did an interview, and his response to gun violence led to others.
“I think I did a few interviews, and then I got more and more requests,” he said.
A year after the shooting, he organized a national seminar on mass shootings. He hired a new police chief focused on community engagement as a solution to gun violence, Ed Jackson.
In the years since, as shootings have risen and fallen in Annapolis, Buckley has been out front again. Some of the tragedies stand out.
In 2021, Michelle Cummings of Houston was killed by a stray bullet the day her son was inducted into the Naval Academy. Two years later, Mario Mireles Ruiz, Nicholas Mireles and Christian Segovia were killed in a neighborhood dispute that erupted during a birthday party.
After every shooting, flood and tornado, the global pandemic and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, there has been an echo of Buckley’s response to the worst day of my life.
“I’m battle-tested, and the next mayor is going to get a battle-tested team, because they can do those things as well,” Buckley said.
We share the lesson of how a mass shooting changes the place you call home.
“I think it changed me, because I think anything could happen,” Buckley said, “like some things you think are never going to happen in your town.”
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