While the one year anniversary of the tragic shootings at Salon Meritage in Seal Beach, which took the lives of eight people and seriously wounded another, has come and gone, planning continues by a committee formed to guide the creation of a memorial to the shocking events on Oct. 12, 2011.
The sensitivity of the subject cannot be understated. The city of Seal Beach, considering the feeling of the victims’ relatives, chose not to hold ceremonies on the actual anniversary of the incident or at the site where it occurred.
Instead, it worked with a group of community leaders to organize a candlelight vigil on Oct. 11 by the pier.
Before the shootings occurred, Seal Beach was mostly thought of as a peaceful, friendly and safe Southern California beach town.
Thanks to its usually quiet atmosphere and close-knit neighborhoods where children played in a town where its Main Street and old fashioned, small town values thrive, people began some years ago to call Seal Beach “Mayberry by the Sea.”
It was an obvious reference to the idyllic town in the Andy Griffith TV show that now seems to reflect times gone by.
No one could have predicted that it would become the site of the worst mass murder spree in Orange County history.
For such a place that prided itself on its sense of safety and small town charm, the events of Oct. 12 hit everyone who lived in and loved the town between the eyes.
One day the town was a paragon of quaintness, the next it was thrown into the national spotlight as a scene of terrible violence and brutality.
The mantle just did not seem to fit. Perhaps it is not really deserved.
The tragedy that occurred in Seal Beach was not prompted by chronic problems such as gang activity, high crime or a even a politically-motivated act of terrorism such as the attacks on the country on September 11, 2001.
It was a random act by one disturbed individual upon innocent people working in a beauty salon, of all places.
It was unthinkable and shocking.
Visions of its aftermath are seared into the minds of many people who rushed to the scene that day. Many recall it being splashed all over TV news reports and spread like a virus all over the Internet, to many people who had hardly, if ever, even heard of Seal Beach.
The town suddenly seemed an epicenter of what some might think of as the devil’s playground.
Despite all that terrible publicity, we all know the truth. That’s not the real Seal Beach. That’s not my Seal Beach.
The real Seal Beach continues to plan school fall carnivals, free Thanksgiving dinners for those who might be lonely, a Christmas Parade to bring its citizens together, and debate the issues that could help it keep its sense of identity in a larger, imposing world outside.
It might be naive to think that the pain in the memories of Oct. 12, 2011 in Seal Beach would just go away with time, but perhaps it’s normal to wish it would.
However, more than that, it seems right and fitting for us to consider most of all the feelings of the people who were most harmed by what happened—all the family members and close friends of the victims.
In admirable fashion, the larger portion of Seal Beach has apparently done so.
They raised and dispersed a significant amount of funds for the ones left behind.
Naturally, people might want to do more in the way of memorializing the victims for them in an effort to help ease their pain.
The effort to do just that has been underway. The question now does not seem to be if it will be done, but where.
The current site under review is near the River’s End Café, by the San Gabriel River jetty.
It is somewhat out of sight by comparison to the veterans memorial on the Seal Beach Pier and other plaques such as the one for the late, beloved city employee Bob Eagle and others in plain sight at Eisenhower Park, in the shade of the popular Seal Beach Pier.
Some of the victims’ family members have expressed approval for the site, where they might visit the memorial in relative privacy.
While the train on planning a memorial to the Salon Meritage victims seems to have left the station, perhaps it’s not too late consider the alternative of not having a memorial in any public area in Seal Beach.
However, if it must be done, then we can only hope, especially for those who were close to the victims, that it recalls how they lived rather than how they died.
Dennis Kaiser is the editor of the Sun Newspaper.
