Mayors of American cities spend much of their time ensuring that basic services are delivered, attending community events and answering emails. However, the job sometimes requires responding to community-altering, life-and-death events. Meeting those moments with competence, compassion and grace requires statesmanship.

Nancy Rotering, the mayor of Highland Park, met her statesmanship moment four years ago while participating in her town’s popular Fourth of July parade. “The sun was shining, flags were waving, and we were all dressed in red, white and blue. We were ebullient,” she recalled.

Then a 21-year-old sniper on the rooftop of a local store unleashed a furious attack using an AR-15-style rifle. Seven people were killed, 48 were injured and the community was traumatized.  

Rotering was marching in the parade when the shooting began and helped usher people to safety. After the shooter was apprehended, she continued to act calmly, compassionately and firmly. She comforted families, coordinated the city’s response and briefed the press. Her tone was resolute, determined and empathetic, but also weary, almost disbelieving. She and Gov. JB Pritzker attended funerals of the victims. 

The mayor traveled to Washington a few weeks later and testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the horrific events of that day.

“My fellow mayors across our great nation fear that it is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ a mass shooting will hit our towns,” she told the senators. “As mayors and municipal leaders, we are on the front lines of public safety. We constantly strategize the worst-case scenarios.”

Rotering described assault weapons as “weapons of war” that are “specifically designed to destroy human beings quickly and efficiently within........

© Chicago Tribune