Annual Day of Remembrance honors victims of violent crime
Dozens of area residents who lost family and friends to violence came out on the ninth annual National Day of Remembrance in Courthouse Square.
Stones bear the names of homicide and violent crime victims in the Crime Victims Memorial Garden behind Washington County Courthouse.
LaVerne Darnell, who lost a family member to homicide, sang and spoke of how to remember victims in daily ritual.
Family members say their lost loved ones names into a microphone before pouring sand into a vertical color collage to remember them.
Since 2008, family and friends have gathered in the Crime Victims Memorial Garden Sept. 13 to remember and honor those who were killed.
“Our mission, as guardians of the Crime Victims Memorial Garden, is to provide a place of solace to those families who can’t forget these tragedies, to build awareness of their loss and the impacts their lives had on us,” said Pam Tarr, a mother who lost her son, Tommy, when he was shot and killed Jan. 8, 2006, in North Franklin Township.
Tarr thanked the Washington County District Attorney’s Office of Victims Services and Betsy Dane, who helped organize the event and build the garden next to Courthouse Square nine years ago.
“We belong to a club we wouldn’t wish upon our worst enemies,” Tarr said to the dozens in attendance Sunday, “but we honor the lives they lived with us being here.”
Sitting in the audience were family members of Jenna Gilmore, a 21-year-old Clarion University student who was killed along with her boyfriend by a drunk driver in 2010; family of Tim McNerney, a Washington & Jefferson College football player who was attacked and killed walking back to campus in 2012; the father of 10-year-old Ta’Niyah Thomas, who was killed as would-be burglars fired shots into her home in March 2014; and family members wearing T-shirts with the image of 46-year-old Vincent “Mystro” Kelly, who was shot and killed while trying to stop a bank robber in June 2013. In nearly every case, perpetrators were brought to justice, but Kelly’s killer has not been caught.
The multitude of rocks bearing victims’ names in the memorial garden impacted local officials and clergy members in attendance.
“As I make my way up to the courthouse every day, I walk past these stones that bear the names of so many victims, and it makes me reflect on the fact that there are too many names … that whatever happens to a criminal in court is never enough. It doesn’t erase the pain for a family, but we can work to lessen your anguish and remember their lives,” said Washington County District Attorney Gene Vittone.
“We gather before these rocks etched with these victims’ names, and, with the water running over them, we, too, are bathed in the memories they left us,” said Sister Sue Fazzini, a member of the Benedictine order from Greene County.
“The Dalai Lama has said when we are faced with tragedy, we can let it consume us or we can use it to change and deny further violence,” she said.
During the ceremony, LaVerne Darnell sang an a cappella song of remembrance and reminded everyone to remember victims through daily ritual.
Then dozens of family members tearfully said the names of their loved ones whom they lost, before picking up cups of pastel-colored sand to pour into a vertical collage in their memory. They hugged each other and were given red, pink and white roses.