​BERNE — At the darkest time of the year, nine hundred people stood shoulder to shoulder, holding candles and singing. Snow fell lightly Monday night, the flakes turning wet as they landed on faces and mittens and boots while the crowd stood in front of the elementary school at Berne.

They were there to mourn a little boy the vast majority of them did not know. Kindergartner Kenneth White was slain in his home last Thursday, police said, his body pitched over the snow bank across from the trailer where he lived with his twin sister and their younger sister. The 19-year-old daughter of their aunt and legal guardian stands accused of murder. Tiffany VanAlstyne, too, had once attended the school where the crowd gathered.

Some of them were mourning a loss of innocence.

“Things like this don’t happen here,” said Holly Busch of Knox.

Kenneth White’s parents stood facing the crowd. They held candles and wept. Kenneth’s mother, Christine White, who lives in Amsterdam, leaned against his father, Jayson White, who lives in western Massachusetts, her long dark hair sometimes covering her face. He wore a white hoodie; she wore a white T-shirt; each portrayed a picture of their slain son.

For part of the ceremony, the school district’s publicist, Bill DeVoe, stood in front of the mourning family to block the row of photographers that lined the walkway.

At the close of the hour-long vigil, the Whites were escorted protectively away from the media.

“It was amazing,” Mr. White told The Enterprise of the vigil. “It shows Kenneth has got a lot of friends…I know as people blow out their candles,” he went on, and they may forget, and Kenneth will be left in the dark. “We want to tell everyone to keep the candles lit,” Mr. White said.

He knew of a Facebook page, Lights for Kenneth White, started by Shannon Vincent of Schoharie, that has over 40,000 followers and maps those who are lighting candles around the world for him, as far away as Mongolia and Iceland.

Mr. White concluded, “My mom once told me, you can light a whole house with one candle.”

Mrs. White had this message about her 5-year-old boy who loved the superhero Spider-Man: “Let everyone know that Spider-Man is looking down on them,” she said.

Why did Kenneth like Spider-Man? “It was the webs,” she said.

Mr. White nodded and made the “Shhh-shhh” sound of Spider-Man flinging webs from his wrist — “Go, web, go!” he said.

Hoping to heal

No one at the vigil spoke about who Kenneth White was but, earlier in the day, the elementary school principal, Audrey Roettgers, who hosted the event, had told The Enterprise that she had walked Kenneth and his twin sister, Cheyanne, to their kindergarten room a couple of times in the fall when they were new to the school.

“I had the joy of walking him with his sister,” she said. “We’d hold hands. He was a happy young man, sometimes bubbly, sometimes a little quieter….He was very curious. He had a lot of questions…He would interact with friends in his classroom.”

She described the atmosphere in the school now as “somber but not sad.” Roettgers said, “Overall, in the building, we’re working on healing, celebrating each child for who they are. Each child is grieving in their own way.”

Some have been using the counseling services offered, she said.

Roettgers had this advice for parents who are trying to help their grieving children, many of them facing death for the first time: “One of the most important things is to listen, to hear what a child is asking,” she said. “There is no wrong way to express grief.”

She also advised, “Only tell the truth, the facts that you know for sure, in an age-appropriate way.” She also said compassion is important.

Monday’s vigil, Roettgers said, “was the brainchild of the parent body. The PTA has been instrumental in organizing it, working in collaboration with the school district.” The school is “weighing a lot of options” for a more permanent memorial, she said, which will take time to decide on and create.

The purpose of the vigil, Roettgers said, “is to pull together as a community, to honor his memory and grieve communally, so we can move forward in the new year.”

Gathering together

As people waited in the dark, they talked in small groups — members of a fire department here, members of a family there. Many of them walked to a lit, white board where they could write messages or draw pictures for Kenneth White. His father wrote, “Daddy loves you.”

Sixteen-year-old Alexis Rogers was one of the people to sign the board; she had come from Schenectady with her cousin and her aunt to attend the vigil for a boy they never knew. She learned about it on television and felt drawn to attend. “It’s really sad,” she said.

Katrina Stevens, a Berne-Knox-Westerlo alumna now studying human development at Oswego, came, too. She didn’t know Kenneth either, but she knew Tiffany VanAlstyne.

“She was always quiet,” said Stevens of the woman now accused of murder. “She never talked to anyone. She wore a lot of princess clothes,” she said referring to the Disney princesses. “People thought it was strange.”

Stevens said she came to the vigil to celebrate Kenneth, concluding, “I’m glad he’s in a safer place.”

Mike Hanley of Berne lives just three-quarters of a mile from the VanAlstyne home on Thacher Park Road where Kenneth died. “It’s easy to recognize,” he said of the trailer painted with red and white stripes and blue shutters.

Did he know Kenneth? “Not till this,” answered Hanley. “I was just very touched, just sympathetic,” he said of why he came to the vigil.

He said of Tiffany VanAlstyne, “There was just a moment of frustration that she can never take back and two families are now in ruins and two young girls will never have their brother for the rest of their lives.”

Karen Creed came because, she said, “That’s what the community does. We stick together on the Hill, in good times and bad times.”

Kay Thompson, a BKW alumna, didn’t know Kenneth either. She came to the vigil out of loyalty to a school district where she had worked for decades as a teacher’s aid, a job she liked because she got to be with her own children. Thompson said the district had supported her, a young widow, when she was in times of need. Now she has children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren who attend the school.

“I feel so sad,” she said of Kenneth’s death.

Joe DeBella of East Berne pondered over his reasons for coming. “We wouldn’t know the little guy if he walked up to our front door,” he said and yet he felt the need to show support.

Winnie Cummings felt the same way. “Coming shows support for all his little classmates,” she said.

DeBella said that, with all the coverage of the murder, “You heard so much about him, it’s kind of like you do know him.”

Jocelyn Marden, an articulate eighth-grader at Berne-Knox-Westerlo, said, “Our house is three or four houses down from his.” On Thursday, Tiffany VanAlstyne had told police that Kenneth had been abducted by two men wearing ski masks.

“With the Amber Alert,” said Jocelyn Marden, “we heard helicopters and saw a lot of police cars.” The experience was frightening and she was glad for the comfort of the crowd on Monday night.

Kevin Brew, a young man, said of coming to the vigil, “If felt like the right thing to do; it’s the least we can do.”

Art Shultes, an elderly man, came as a member of the Berne fire company. He and other company volunteers were alerted to the vigil through a page from their chief on their phones, said Mary Hampton.

Shultes also works part-time at the school on a recycling program with the kids. “I’ve probably seen him,” he said of Kenneth. “I love all the kids.”

Seth Garry, a 13-year-old BKW student may have had the most direct answer to why he was attending a vigil for someone he didn’t know: “I feel bad for the poor kid,” he said.

Songs and prayers

Opening the ceremony, Roettgers welcomed the crowd, saying, “We truly appreciate your presence. We have so many people from so many walks of life.”

Pastor Wendy Cook of the Helderberg Lutheran Church gave the invocation. “God, our comforter, you are a refuge and a strength for us….Enable us to hear the words of faith so our fear is dispelled…and our hope reawakened,” she said.

“Amen,” the crowd intoned in response.

Then people lit the candles they had been given as Paula Dunnells, an event organizer with the BKW Parent-Teacher Association, read a poem called “1,000 Candles.”

Afterwards, the Lussier siblings led the crowd in singing “Silent Night.” No one needed to look at the sheet music they had been handed.

“Silent night, holy night,” they sang as nine-hundred points of light flickered in the darkness. “All is calm, all is bright.”

The interim superintendent, Joseph Natale, thanked the community for its “outpouring and support at such a tragic time.” He thanked the school staff, too, for “the resolve they have shown.” And, he called the community coming together “a bright spot” and said it would “work through this tragedy collectively.”

Then the crowd sang “Amazing Grace.” At one point, Renée Lusier’s microphone stopped working, but it didn’t matter. Her voice reverberated in the still night air as her brothers, John and Jared, standing tall behind her, provided the harmony.

“I once was lost but now am found”: The words rippled across the candlelit crowd.

Pastor Robert Hoffman with the Berne Reformed Church then joined Cook in reading Psalms, which Cook said “in times of great distress…speak to the depth of the soul.”

She also said, “We gather as a community this evening in collective sorrow…In our understanding of a proper world order, children are not supposed to die…Some things are left only to God to know…This world and this life can be hazardous and risky…We want to protect our children from all threats, but that is impossible. We must live with our fears and anxieties….”

Christmastime, celebrating the birth of Jesus, said Hoffman, is an “expression of the depth of God’s love…We are never alone in our life’s journey,” he said. “God is with us…As the combined flames of our candles dispel the darkness,” he said, so, too, can hope lift the burden of sorrow and fear.

The two pastors prayed together: “Goodness is stronger than evil. Love is stronger than hate. Light is stronger than darkness. Truth is stronger than lies,” they said, speaking one after the other.

“BKW is a strong community, loving community,” Roettgers concluded. “One of the strongest things we have is one another.”

She instructed those in the crowd to raise up their lights. “You have support all around you,” she said.

The crowd stood silent, candles held high, as Roettgers read a list of local businesses who supported the vigil and of local officials who were there.

She invited those who wanted refreshments to come inside the school and concluded, “Keep the memory of Kenneth strong in your heart…Hug your children a little tighter tonight….”

Those in the crowd, young and old, crying and smiling, stood silent and still for a long while as the snow fell softly around them.

Kenneth White Memorial Fund set up as a trust for his two sisters

Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple has announced his office has established an account for the sisters of 5-year-old Kenneth White who was killed on Dec. 18.

At the time of his death, he was living on Thacher Park Road with two other siblings, his twin sister, Cheyanne, also 5, and sister Christine, 4.

Apple said, in a release, that his office established the account for his sisters after an outpouring of community support wanting to help the surviving children.

Anyone wishing to make a monetary donation can do so directly at any M&T Bank branch by making a deposit to the “County of Albany Kenneth White Memorial Fund” or by dropping it off at any of the sheriff’s stations listed below:

— Headquarters, Albany County Courthouse, 16 Eagle Street, room 79, Albany NY 12207;

— Public Safety Building, 58 Verda Avenue, Clarksville NY 12041; and

— Albany County International Airport, 737 Albany-shaker Road, Colonie, NY.

All checks should be made payable to the “County of Albany Kenneth White Memorial Fund” and the sheriff cautions that other fundraising efforts being circulated on social media are not officially sanctioned or supported by the sheriff’s office.