What to do with tributes after the shooting stops?

Dismantling, preserving public memorials after mass tragedy is complicated business

DALLAS — An 8-foot cross rests on its side, near an assortment of other crosses and a menagerie of police uniform patches. Close by are rain-curled posters and hundreds of artificial flowers. “Back the blue,” reads one sign, not far from where stuffed animals sit on a library shelf that once held true crime books.

Here, deep in Dallas’ central library, archivists have spent months sorting more than 10,000 tributes that flowed in after five law enforcement officers were killed in an ambush on July 7, 2016. The collection, one of the largest of its kind, is a staggering chronicle of public grief and support that followed the attack, the first anniversary of which Dallas marked Friday.

The archive is not about what happened that night, but about “the outpouring of love from the citizens — from the world — that happened afterward,” said Jo Giudice, director of Dallas’ public library system. “That’s what’s important.”

In recent years, archivists, historians and librarians have been asked to curate the aftermath of catastrophes: school massacres, a nightclub siege, a bombing, a rampage during a Bible study. The ease and speed with which the sprawling memorials appear belie the years of work that almost always follow.

“Communities that get hit with one of these unexpected events, they have no idea of what to do with this unexpected material,” said Sylvia Grider, an anthropologist who oversaw curation at Texas A&M University after a dozen people were killed in a bonfire collapse in 1999. “Every community has got a different set of problems that have to be resolved, and it’s hard. It’s terrible.”

For the cities that fill the grimmest of roll calls — Boston and Newtown, Aurora and Orlando, Blacksburg and Tucson, Charleston and College Station — advice on how to handle tragedy comes from conciliatory conference calls, knowing emails and occasional seminars at professional conferences. There are questions that are suddenly both logistical and existential: What do you do with truckloads of teddy bears? How do you prevent mildew? How soon is too soon to dismantle memorials?

Tributes surged into Dallas soon after a gunman opened fire during a protest last summer. Five officers were killed; the gunman died during a standoff.

By the next night, the headquarters of the Dallas Police Department, which employed four of the five officers, was the site of a swelling memorial. Days later, Giudice heard a forecast for a summertime storm and organized a mission to preserve what mourners had left in tribute.

Using a truck that normally delivers library books, city workers and volunteers raced the rain to sweep up candles and vases, cards and toy cars. They went back at least twice in the days afterward, filling shelf after shelf until they ran out of space. The only items not kept were the fresh flowers, except for a bouquet of white roses, which Giudice dried and hung in her office.

Although the library is housing and organizing the collection, the artifacts belong to the police.

Dallas has some experience with the cataloging of tragedy, and its municipal library’s holdings include four binders of cards left at Dealey Plaza after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Viewed now, nearly 54 years later, they are a time capsule of shock and sadness that still permeate Dallas.

“In your final moment of life, we saw your smile and wave. This memory we will always treasure,” said one note, which four people from Dallas had signed.

“Spontaneous shrines,” as Grider and other scholars describe them, are a largely new phenomenon whose popularity can be traced to the 1997 death of Princess Diana. Ever since, and especially after Sept. 11, 2001, displays of affection and grief have become familiar elements of mass tragedy.

“I don’t think you can possibly fathom the depth and breadth of a project that comes upon you so immediately in a crisis situation,” said Michael Perkins, who oversees curation efforts in Orlando and hired temporary workers to help with the deluge of items, only about 6,000 of which have been tallied so far.

“As much as the actual event can represent the worst of humanity,” Perkins said, “in many different ways, these memorials can represent the best.”

Not that good intentions make the task of people like Perkins any easier. Tributes are still arriving at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, and more than two years after the attack, archivists are still grappling with issues of space and money. Yet they are preserving as much as they can; to do otherwise, they said, would risk history.

“These are materials that people created out of a sense of urgency and need, and it happens so quickly,” said Meg Moughan, the records manager for the Charleston and one of the people who has been involved with the preservation efforts. “You can’t really determine what it’s going to mean, but you know you have to take steps to keep these materials available.”