Community Largely Silent, Conflicted on Shooting Memorial

While, the aftermath of the brought out an instant avalanche of community for the victims’ families, the movement to establish a memorial in their honor has been, conversely, muted.

As today’s deadline approached for the community to offer suggestions for a memorial to the city, officials had received only one input form. On Monday, the city was able to put together a 10 person advisory committee to help choose a memorial, but it took a last-minute plea for volunteers.

Where the community was united in the desire to help the victims’ families, the expectations for a permanent memorial have proven to be more complex. when a lone gunman stormed the salon and opened fire in Orange County’s worst-ever mass murder. How best to honor them is the latest challenge for the community in the aftermath of that tragedy.

“I think it’s an awkward moment, and I am not quite sure where to go from here,” City Councilwoman Ellery Deaton said at Monday’s City Council meeting.

“There is a backlash against a memorial. There is a segment of our population that wants to be very careful about how we memorialize this and that it’s mellow and respectful rather than large,” she said. “I think what people are afraid of is that it’s going to become a memorial to the event itself rather than the people’s lives. They just don’t want to see that happen.”

Deaton said she received emails from residents who said they do not want to remember that day and would not want to give the shooter power over the community to make them relive the tragedy through a permanent memorial. Instead, the community’s energy should continue to focus on support for the families, they wrote. If a permanent memorial is erected, it should be understated, a simple monument to those eight people who touched so many lives, they added. One emailer also suggested that the memorial only be built with the approval of the victims’ families.

Councilman Gordon Shanks echoed their concern.

“I’d like to keep something relatively small,” he said.

City leaders debated whether to pay for the memorial from city coffers rather than community donations in order to limit the scope of the project. But, in the end, they put off a decision about how it should be funded.

“I am still not certain that we don’t want to include any outside donations,” said Mayor Mike Levitt.

Now, city officials are asking residents to fill out input forms offering their ideas for how to fund the memorial, where it should be located and what it should look like.

At Monday’s City Council meeting, the council approved a 10-person memorial committee and instructed city staff to invite the relatives of the victims to join the committee. If the committee holds to the schedule set by the city, it will meet a couple times and sift through community input in order to recommend a memorial to the City Council. City officials have set an ambitious schedule to have the memorial completed by October. The ten committee volunteers are:

• Nat Ferguson
• Laura Ellsworth
• Marie Antos
• John Fox
• Bill Ayers
• Kathy Cunningham
• Beverly Doran
• Allyn Mattox
• Shelley Kagan

How to submit your ideas for a memorial:

1. Fillout this input form.
2. Completed forms must be sent to Tim Kelsey in the Community Services office or by email to tkelsey@sealbeachca.gov).