Maxwell Park Neighborhood Candlelight Vigil
Be careful what you wish for… it may come true.
On Thursday evening I was relaxing in my Maxwell Park home noticing the stillness. My life has been busy recently and I missed the excitement. About five minutes later, two neighbors walked past our house and mentioned a memorial service for a neighbor who had been shot a day earlier. I did not miss the excitement that much. (Photo Gallery Here)
I had been so busy with my own life, I was unaware that Judy Salamon had been shot. I had noticed the helicopters hovering over our neighborhood the day earlier, but I hoped that they were visiting for an afternoon traffic incident. Helicopters and homicides are too common in my neighborhood. It is easier to pray for bad traffic.
Perhaps I would have learned about the memorial online, but on Thursday, our internet modem broke, so I missed all the messages from our neighborhood listserv. I missed the Community Event organized in the aftermath of the shooting.
I would have missed the Candlelight Vigil too, if not for concerned neighbors who shared their grief. At the vigil, neighbors shared ideas for reducing random gun deaths, but the discussions were probably ways to process shared grief. This is not to diminish candlelight vigils. These are very important and if I am ever to die from a random gun shot, I would have been honored by the neighbors’ support.
I was honored to be part of my neighborhood on Thursday night just as I am honored to be part of the school community that my children attend despite the crime committed against it earlier this week. News vans arrived to tell the larger Bay Area about Melrose Elementary Losing More Than One Hundred Computers in an early morning break in. As someone who has lived in the neighborhood and written and photographed about the community for several years, I often wonder, “Where do the cameras go when they leave?”
We lost an important member of our community this week, but Maxwell Park will adapt. We will find a way to survive. We always do.
Wow, I’m sorry.
Really beautiful pictures and words, Bryan. I ‘m sending you and your neighborhood well wishes for peace and healing.
Beautiful pictures and beautiful words, Bryan.
thank you both. we have a wonderful neighborhood that both of you would understand. We are not prefect, but we are special.
Beautiful post, Bryan.
Thank you Sheila D’Amico for the compliments… and thank you for your support when you were the Editor in Chief of the MacArthur Metro. I have been able to become a neighborhood journalist, in large part, because of your guidance and dedication to our larger community. The news trucks do not see the continual work that happens to keep our local neighborhoods functioning. My post started with the phrase, “Be careful what you wish for…” and I was thinking more about that evening. I was bored and I wanted to do something interesting. Be Careful. I also could have been thinking about neighborhood reporting, because it can be draining… but I would not change the larger experience. I have seen too many good things, including our community deal with pain.
[…] months after the workshop, I photographed a neighborhook candlelight vigil. Our neighbor, Judy Salamon, had been shot and killed in the neighborhood. I rushed over to the […]