VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (WAVY) — It’s not a field trip anyone would likely tout they are looking forward to, as it surrounds scouting locations to forever commemorate a mass murder.
But the more than dozen members of the Virginia Beach 5/31 memorial committee spent Thursday afternoon getting off and on a bus, dodging raindrops, in order to begin narrowing down where they hope to create their space of remembrance.
City staff members came up with eight sites that could eventually be home to the permanent memorial the committee is charged with planning. Half of them are located on the Municipal Center campus, the other half are at either Princess Anne Commons Gateway Park, Beach Garden Park or Williams Farm Recreation Center.
Tom Nicholas, who manages all city buildings and is assisting the committee, reiterated several times as he lead the tour, that none of the eight options have to be the site ultimately selected.
The tour began behind the current City Hall, where a new retention pond has been built for the new City Hall next door.
“Probably as shovel-ready that you can get a site,” Nicholas said.
The second site option would place the memorial at the corner of the Building 2 property, the site of the carnage exactly 34 months before.
It was on May 31, 2019, a city engineer shot and killed 12 people and seriously hurt four others before being killed by police inside Building 2. Almost all victims were city employees. An officer was shot but saved by his ballistic vest.
While some in the group said they thought having it as close to the site as possible would be appropriate, others wondered if that could induce further trauma.
“I think on-site would be harder for people that actually have to come to work here every day,” Cossette Livas, one of the committee members, said. “I personally am not sure I could deal with that.”
The third site seemed to be the most popular with a majority of the group. It is located along West Neck Road behind the city’s Juvenile Detention Center.
To access it, the group had to walk down a tree-lined path past the Ryan Keith Cox Post Office — a building named in memory of one of the 12 victims killed — which eventually opened up to an oval-like property encircled by trees with a pond nearby.
It was the number of trees in the oval that was eerily coincidental.
“Amazingly, there are 12 trees here,” Nicholas said.
Both Jason Nixon, a committee member whose wife was one of the 12 victims, and Councilwoman Sabrina Wooten said being in that space made them “feel something.”
Billy Almond, a committee member who is a landscape architect, agreed the space is special.
Almond has designed memorials before, such as the law enforcement memorial at the Virginia Beach Oceanfront. However, he called this assignment the most honoring one yet.
“This wants to be a more tranquil place, where people can come here and think and remember and heal,” Almond said.
The final space at the Municipal Center is near the intersection of Nimmo Parkway and Princess Anne Road.
Following the meeting, the committee discussed how they may want to do smaller memorials in areas that have more traffic, in order to point people to the main memorial if it is placed in a more “out of the way” location.
The public will have the chance to weigh in at the committee’s next meeting on April 27.