In Memoriam: Thirty Years Later from Gainesville

I wrote this five years ago, about what happened in Gainesville at University of Florida:

We shouldn't forget the lives taken that didn't need to go.  There are so many of them taken from us every day across the globe, and the sorrow of it is how much waste and loss and pain there is when that happens.

If the killer had never been, right now Sonja or Christina or Christa or Tracy or Manuel would be my age or close to it, in their 40s.  Likely married or with kids of their own.  Kids old enough to be attending UF themselves by now, twenty-five years later.  All five of them could be working somewhere, as doctors or engineers or teachers.  Writing books, or painting, or composing music.  Creating, adding to the world.

We are them and they could have been us.  Maybe doing better, maybe not.  But we'll never know, we'll never see.  

All that loss during a cold week in August 1990.

In memoriam.

The anniversary didn't make a lot of national news and the pandemic forced any public gathering to cancel, but the local paper Gainesville Sun covered the look back in sorrow (by Cindy Swirko):

...At other anniversary points of this pivotal tragedy, the Gainesville community has gathered for vigils or services of commemoration. This time, with the coronavirus pandemic preventing that, the anniversary might seem overlooked.

The University of Florida stopped anniversary recognitions such as tolling the carillon bells of Century Tower five times after the 25th anniversary. There are lasting reminders on campus, however. There are also five palm trees planted in the median near the wall in memory of the students, as well as five trees on campus near Library East...

New students to Gainesville might see the memorial of trees and placards in the median of Southwest 34th Street south of Second Avenue and not realize who it’s for.

Or they might see the center panel on the graffitied wall beside the road and not realize it is a sacred spot...

Photo by Sam Thomas for the Sun

The locals defend that spot. Anybody tries to paint over it, within hours the spot is repainted so the five names - Sonja, Christina, Christa, Manuel, Trudy - and the hearts are put back up.

The sin and sorrow of murder is the void we endure when the lives are gone. They could be doctors, teachers, parents, artists, travelers, thinkers, dreamers... All that potential gone.

And it's just these five lives. There are so many others killed in acts of rage and lust all across the world, all that pain and sorrow to endure more and more.

Just want to live in a stronger loving world, can't we just have that, someday...?