Land Matters: Can Memorials Heal the Bereaved?

Note: this column was written before the tragic events of February 14, 2008 on the campus of Northern Illinois University.

What’s the most fitting way to remember the students and faculty killed at Virginia Tech last April? When a crazed student burst into classrooms and opened fire using an arsenal of weapons, he left 32 dead and a lot of people grieving—the fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, friends, and classmates of the slain. How will they come to grips with their loss? The answer to that question will, of course, have serious implications for the bereaved from other mass disasters, of which this country seems to have had more than its share of late. The Twin Towers, the Columbines, the Oklahoma Cities—how do friends and loved ones heal (if at all) after such atrocities?

Here’s one approach: Build a memorial in the campus landscape. This is what I call “the knee-jerk response.” I see on a Virginia Tech web site that fund-raising is already under way. I suppose that the effort of raising money and guiding the design of the memorial will provide a welcome distraction for those who are grieving. But will the memorial itself, once it is built—a big, insipid object out in the landscape—help anyone to heal? We are starting to have an absolute glut of recent memorials. Do we know of any bereaved person who has been comforted by any of them? And if you doubt that the design of any obligatory memorial will be insipid, you haven’t been following the current crop of memorials in this country.

There’s another way to respond to some of our mass disasters, at least those like the one at Virginia Tech: Take some form of constructive action to prevent similar tragedies in the future. Consider this: The Virginia Tech killer easily purchased his arsenal in Virginia—one of the least restrictive states in which to buy guns—despite his history of mental instability. One of the loopholes in the state’s gun purchase laws still lets people buy guns at gun shows without requiring background checks of any kind, which means that someone with a criminal record or a history of mental illness can load up on whatever firearms his heart desires, no questions asked.

So in late January gun-control advocates—including survivors of the Virginia Tech massacre—poured into the Virginia Senate offices to support a bill that would close that loophole. As part of their advocacy they staged a “lie in” in the Virginia landscape outside the capitol to draw attention to gun deaths in the commonwealth last year.

Did the bill pass? It did not, despite the Virginia Tech advocates’ passion and despite Virginia Governor Tim Kaine’s support for it. Among other reasons for shooting down the bill, Virginia legislators said that closing the gun loophole “would hurt business” at gun shows. But despite that setback—and regardless of which side of the gun-control issue you’re on—the Virginia Tech contingent’s passionate advocacy for this issue is a powerful and moving response to last April’s massacre. It is also an effective precedent for other mass tragedies. A constructive action—almost any constructive action—is a far more meaningful way of remembering the dead than just another obligatory memorial.

J. William “Bill” Thompson, FASLA
Editor / bthompson@asla.org