Gracie Anne Muehlberger and her father Bryan used to glide around on the kitchen floor in their socks, dancing to the song, “Cinderella.”
“All too soon the clock will strike midnight, and she’ll be gone. She will be gone,” the lyrics say, telling the tale of a final father-daughter dance before he loses her to a prince.
“We could have never imagined that this life story – the one about my real-world Cinderella – that her clock would strike midnight at 7:38 a.m. on November 14, 2019,” Bryan Muehlberger told hundreds of mourners gathered Saturday at Gracie’s memorial service.
Gracie, 15, and Dominic Michael Blackwell, 14, were killed when a fellow student at Saugus High School pulled a .45-caliber pistol out of a backpack and went on a shooting rampage in the quad. Three other students were injured. The suspected shooter, Nathan Berhow, 16, then turned the gun on himself. He died the following day.
On Saturday afternoon at the Real Life Church in Valencia, the Muehlbergers’ longtime house of worship, Pastor Rusty George asked those at the service to continue reaching out to Gracie’s family.
“I encourage you from this day forward, to walk closely beside them, because they are going to need you,” he said.
The church was filled with Gracie’s presence. A video montage showed a vibrant young girl, and then a teenager, dancing, laughing singing. Her father, flanked by Gracie’s brothers, choked back tears as he shared their cherished memories. Gracie’s close friends laughed as they remembered her smarts and humor, and her mischievousness.
Gracie loved shopping, getting her eyebrows done and going out for mani-pedis with her mom, said Bryan Muehlberger. But he made sure to get in an ice cream date with her a couple of times a month. He wanted his daughter to know how a man should treat her someday, he said.
One of her best friends remembered Gracie as “the girl with the top-of-line fashion sense and sassy attitude.” Friends and family chimed in with favorite recollections: She could eat an entire jar of cherries in a single sitting. She loved performing and would set up makeshift stages and set up chairs and “sell tickets.” She relished singing along to rap songs by rappers with names starting with “Lil.”
Gracie was an “independent spirit,” her friends said, “unapologetically herself.”
She had a mischievous side, instigating laughing fits during class, or pestering a group of older girls who wound up chasing 11-year-old Gracie and her little pals – with sticks.
She was also trouble as a D.J., her dad recalled in another light moment. She would change the songs every few seconds.
Among those speaking was Gracie’s good friend Addison Koegle, 14, who was wounded in the shooting. “I have never felt more pain physically and emotionally ever in my life,” Addison said.
And words that Gracie once wrote in her journal were read aloud and surely taken to heart.
“You only have one life to live,” she wrote, “so why not live it great, real and fill it with life’s memories and experiences?”
“Thank you Gracie,” Bryan Muelhberger said, “for sharing your soul with all of us.”