The word “anniversary” doesn’t seem to fit. It’s better used to mark occasions of celebration, the passing of another year in a marriage, on a job, for a moment in history. But it’s difficult to use the word anniversary when it’s connected to tragedy. The word catches in the throat.
Snohomish County now has two moments in history that we will now mark with each passing year, if not as an anniversary, as moments in history that call for reflection and remembrance.
We passed the one-year mark earlier this spring for the Oso landslide that killed 43 people on March 22, 2014.
Tomorrow, Oct. 24, marks the passing of a year since Marysville Pilchuck High School student Jaylen Fryberg shot five fellow students in a lunchroom at the high school, killing Shaylee “Shay” Chuckulnaskit, Andrew Fryberg, Zoe Glasso and Gia Soriano and seriously wounding Nate Hatch, before taking his own life.
Soon after the shooting, students and others in the community looked to mourn and honor those who were killed with vigils and memorial services. Signs and carnations, red and white for the school’s colors, were attached to the chain-link fence around the school, later joined by “MP Strong” spelled out in red plastic cups on the fence. Red and white ribbons appeared across town.
With the passing of a year, many of those same images will return this weekend, though at first there were questions early on about whether and how to memorialize what had happened.
In the days after the shooting, members of the Marysville and Tulalip communities were contacted by those too familiar with the grief that follows a mass shooting. City, school and tribal leaders were called by representatives of Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 students and six adults were lost in the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting on Dec. 14, 2012, and Isla Vista, California, where six were killed on May 23, 2014, at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Among their support, said Tara Mizell, parks and recreation services manager for the city, was advice not to let the one-year mark pass without notice.
“If you don’t plan a community event,” Mizell said they were told, “someone else is going to plan it for you.”
To keep such an event about the students and the community and those who died, a day of remembrance was planned for tomorrow.
Among the events scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. on the high school campus are a walk around the campus, the return of carnations and cups to the fence, the planting of 10,000 red and white tulip bulbs on the school grounds, music, a brief message and a moment of silence.
The intent, said Mizell, who has been involved in the planning with students and others from the community, was to allow those who wished to, to come together to grieve, remember and come away a little stronger. The event is being called MP Stronger.
One more thing is now being done to remember the innocent lives lost and honor those who shared in the grief and recovery.
The Marysville and Tulalip communities are using the strength gained over the past year to reach out to help others. Just as members of the Sandy Hook and UC Santa Barbara communities reached out to them, community leaders including Mizell, Mayor Jon Nehring, Marysville School District Becky Berg, Tulalip leaders and others have called Roseburg, Oregon, to offer their continuing support following the shooting deaths of nine people at Umpqua Community College.
“We remembered how many reached out to us,” Nehring said. From that shared experience, the greater Marysville and Tulalip communities can “use what we’ve been through to help someone else through this,” he said.
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