How to Navigate Memorials and Remembrance Days After a Violent Incident
When someone we’re close with dies, it’s a natural human instinct to want to memorialize that person in some way.
But when that person is perhaps a colleague or student who has died or been injured in an extreme act of violence at your workplace, navigating the process of memorials and remembrance can be complicated.
“If there was a violent incident that happened at the workplace itself, there needs to be some sensitivity in how it is memorialized based on the needs of those proximate to it,” says Diana Concannon, PCI, forensic psychologist and associate provost, strategic initiatives and partnerships, at Alliant International University.
“I’ve worked with an organization that for those that were proximate, they wanted a photo of the deceased close to where a hallway where the situation happened,” Concannon adds. “Others did not want that. There is no formula. It takes a great deal of sensitivity and listening.”
In Preparation
All of the stakeholders interviewed for this series agreed that any planning for a memorial or an official remembrance activity should wait until several months after the incident. This will allow time for those affected by it—especially those who may have been present or directly responded—to begin processing what happened.
Once that time has passed, Concannon says organizations can begin sharing messaging that they are going to be discussing and soliciting ideas as to how best memorialize the incident. This outreach should include family members of people who were killed in the incident, those injured in the incident, those closest to those individuals harmed, and witnesses.
Organizational leaders should also consider whether a memorial is appropriate for the setting, says Elizabeth Brown, principal at a charter school in Florida and a founding member of the Principal Recovery Network—which supports school principals who have experienced a shooting at their school.
A memorial at a high school might be appropriate. But a similar marker or remembrance space would not be the right fit for an elementary school environment where very young children would see it, Brown adds.
“The age and the maturity of the students determines how you handle it,” she says. “The demographics of your location will determine how you handle it. There’s just a lot of nuances that go into walking that path of recovery and taking that journey with the school community.”
It’s also important—when possible—to ensure that memorials are in places that are sustainable in the long-term, Concannon adds.
“We saw this after events of mass shootings or school shootings where makeshift memorials are created,” she explains. “But they are created in places that obstruct traffic, and then law enforcement has the painful and difficult responsibility of relocating those memorials. This can create secondary trauma for people, and that is unnecessary if we create a place where people can memorialize a loss.”
Hannah Fullmer, director of supportive services and mental health first aid instructor at Growing Resiliency for Aquariums and Zoo Employees (GRAZE), says memorial planners might want to consider creating a remembrance space that is not on a direct path that staff must go by every time they come to work. Instead, she recommends choosing a location for an onsite memorial—if that’s what stakeholders want—in a place that people can choose to visit.
“If they want to thoughtfully and mindfully make the choice to go be with that plaque or go be with that bench, it’s there,” Fullmer says. “Making that space, not isolating but away from common throughways so that it’s not something that exposure is forced on people, so that if they’re having that moment of reflection or that moment of memory and remembrance that they want to go do that, then they can be empowered to make that choice.
“Any opportunity to empower people after an event is what is most beneficial to post-traumatic recovery, post-traumatic growth,” Fullmer adds.
Several institutions that GRAZE has worked with have created rock gardens on the zoo property as memorial sites for violent incidents or animal-related tragedies. These spaces are often not overly highlighted as memorial sites, instead maybe using small plaques on garden benches to designate the space, Fullmer says.
“Sometimes a highlight takes it away from the individual experience and makes it more universal,” Fullmer adds. “While a sense of connection is important and valuable, respecting everyone’s individuality to grief processing and post-traumatic growth is more beneficial.”
In Practice
Brown followed many of the concepts outlined above during her onboarding as the principal at Forest High School in Ocala, Florida. Roughly 45 days prior to Brown joining the school, a student had opened fire with a gun from a hallway into a classroom, seriously injuring another student before security personnel responded to stop the violence.
“The biggest question was what to do with that classroom because it was smack dab in the middle of traffic of the school,” Brown says. “Everybody walked past that classroom, and so there was quite the process to decide what we would do with that classroom and how we would turn it into something joyful and positive.”
Brown conducted listening sessions with staff, students, and the student who was injured in the attack. Those informed meetings spurred the school to turn the classroom into a mentoring center with the support of local businessman Ron “Rondo” Fernandez, who created a nonprofit that provides clothing, school supplies, food, and other services to students in need.
Fernandez and his wife brought in couches and TVs, and they helped decorate the classroom to look like a student lounge. School supplies, food items, and clothing were set up for students to take home. Volunteers showed up to staff the room, newly named The Rock.
“Students could go in there and just sit down and watch the TV during lunches,” Brown says. “There were mentors that had been trained that were there all the time.”
These mentors played an important role in supporting students through that first year alongside school counselors, who were deeply impacted by the shooting and going through the recovery process as well, Brown adds.
As the school community prepared to reach the one-year mark after the shooting, Brown says additional listening sessions were conducted with the student who was injured in the attack, the student body, and staff to decide how to approach the remembrance date.
“The student that was injured absolutely did not want any type of commemoration on campus, except for The Rock being in that room,” Brown says.
In respect of those wishes, the school decided to hold a one-year commemoration event on a Saturday in April 2019 at the church that had served as the reunification site following the attack. The one-time event would be focused on celebrating the resiliency of the school community during the year after the incident.
Students “wanted to go back to where they were reunited with their loved ones,” Brown says. “They did a big ceremony. They had a big video about all the cool things that had gone on this year. Our student leaders spoke, the victim that had been shot spoke, our superintendent spoke, I spoke. We just had such a positive, uplifting time.”
Students, staff, and the first responders who came to their aid after the attack were invited for a formal ceremony followed by a community day of service.
“Because we’re a mid-sized town, anywhere that you went in town that day, you saw students and teachers with our Forest High School Wildcat t-shirts on, serving, giving back to the community that took care of us in that moment,” Brown recalls.
For resources on how to plan and prepare memorials at schools following an act of violence, check out the Principal Recovery Network’s Guide to Recovery.
Megan Gates is senior editor at Security Management. Connect with her at [email protected] or on LinkedIn.
