BY VENI FIELDS
VIRGINIA BEACH — Three years ago, many of us shared time in the standing-room-only sanctuary of Virginia Beach’s Rock Church on Kempsville Road to grieve together in a commemoration of 12 people whose lives were cut short in an event that landed our city on a long list of places that have endured mass shootings.
It was impossibly difficult. For the next two years, because of Covid-19, we were prevented from gathering in person to hug, to talk, to share memories and feelings, or to just sit quietly among fellow residents who understood how we were existing with our collective burden and individual grief.
This year, finally, we could, and we did at Mount Trashmore just before sunset on Tuesday, May 31 – this year’s anniversary of 5/31, the date of the tragedy at Building 2 at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center.
Perhaps we weren’t quite as raw. Maybe we had our feet under us a little bit more. We might have been surprised a bit when we discovered that tears were still there just under the surface.
Perhaps what we learned that Tuesday night was how the city worked with residents, health organizations, volunteers and businesses to set up a support network to address what we did know – that we would never forget that day or the people who fell. That although we may be healing in some ways, it still – and likely always will – hurt. To remember. To be residents of one of these cities. Or to be people affected directly or indirectly by this event.
Throughout this past month, the city presented remembrances with “Love4VB” and “VBStrong,” including lighted public buildings, flying flags with the adopted forget-me-not flower symbol, free yoga classes, social media photo frames, mindfulness and mental health awareness programs, culminating in the ceremony at Mount Trashmore Park.
Twelve flower sprays of white chrysanthemums, roses and gladiolas with ribbons imprinted with the names of the lost lined the stage in front of the lake where geese swam through a breeze that carried music from Symphonicity, the symphony orchestra of Virginia Beach, the Virginia Beach Chorale and bagpipes from Tidewater Pipes and Drums. The Joint Honor Guard of the Virginia Beach Fire & Police Departments and Virginia Beach Sheriff’s Office presented colors before our National Anthem. A “comfort corner” was set up near the stage with counselors, therapy dogs and chaplains standing by.
Potted lilies on either side of the stage were surrounded by palm-sized rocks hand-painted with remembrances that can be viewed in several videos on YouTube and the “Love4VB” website, loveforvb.com.
City officials and survivors spoke openly about shared pain and offered reasons for hope, paths to healing, resiliency. No one proposed it would be or that it has been easy.
Mayor Bobby Dyer, City Manager Patrick Duhaney and Deputy City Manager Ken Chandler talked of kindness and of love, how quickly residents came together to help each other and have been helping each other since 2019.
Bettina Williams, who has worked for Virginia Beach Public Utilities for almost 20 years and worked in Building 2, and who left work at 4 p.m. to attend a Relay for Life event on Friday, May 31, 2019 – at the end of her “birthday month” – made a special request in honor of her “coworkers, my friends, my adopted family members” before reading a poem: “If you could each love one another, do something kind … you can make a world of difference in their day and in their lives.”
Before the lighting of the Virginia Beach city emblem with twelve spotlights directed toward it and a larger forget-me-not below it on the other side of the park, Battalion Chief Lorna Trent of the Virginia Beach Fire Department closed the ceremony.
She said, “Today is a day for remembrance, reflection, and unity. Today we came together to remember our friends, family, and coworkers. We remember all the sacrifice and hardships of that day and the many days that followed. We remember the good times, the laughs and the precious moments that we shared. But most importantly, we remember and honor the victims and survivors. Today is a day of reflection. As I reflected back on the weeks and months after that lifechanging day, I remembered the pain. The pain of great loss that did not discriminate, that crossed all boundaries, and reached every corner of our community. But more than the pain, what I remembered most was the overwhelming love and compassion that embraced our community.”
Perhaps the faces in our company that evening in the park carried all those feelings as the sun began to set.
What we had this year that we didn’t in 2020 and 2021 were the handshakes, the embraces, the smiles we could see. Arms we could wrap around each other and the shoulders we could lean on, upon which we could shed tears.
Speakers reminded us, as they did in 2019, that we may have been marked, but we won’t be defined by what happened here. And as the flowers were moved, the instruments packed away, bagpipers sounding “Amazing Grace” from the top of the hill and across the park and the respectfully closed and darkened carnival in the corner, the sky glowed a deep peach and pink behind us.
We left knowing what others before us learned, what some are going through now three years after this terrible event came to our home, what some in other cities have yet to understand. We know, though our permanent memorial to 5/31 is still in the works, that we will always remember the victims, the survivors, the event. About what it means to be together.
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