Finally, a Feasible Memorial

Almost from the day James O. Huberty murdered 21 people at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, that community has been divided as to the appropriate way to honor the memory of those killed. Sentiment has ranged from building a park on the site of the massacre to ignoring it altogether and returning the property to business use. In recent years, the one thing that has unified opinion in San Ysidro is that San Diego has waited too long to take some action on the matter.

Now, City Manager John Lockwood has recommended that the property--which was donated to the city by the McDonald’s Corp. after the 1984 tragedy--be sold and the proceeds used to build a memorial park elsewhere in San Ysidro. This is a good idea, and the City Council should adopt it.

An issue such as this is by definition emotional, and there is no way to please everyone who has feelings about it. But at some level, logic also must play a role, and the city manager’s proposal is both logical and tasteful. The restaurant site is not only too small to be a legitimate park, but its location on busy San Ysidro Boulevard also argues against that.

Former City Manager Sylvester Murray once proposed that $100,000 be spent to build a memorial at the site, but area business people opposed that idea, and it did not seem to be the best use of either the land or the city’s money.

Lockwood’s plan includes selling the property for private development, placing a memorial marker on a quarter-acre parcel next to a branch city library about half a mile away, and purchasing four or five acres within a couple miles of the site for use as a memorial park with sports fields.

As much as anything in recent memory here, the San Ysidro massacre was a real community tragedy.

After three years, it is high time the city moved to create a permanent memorial. This proposal does that in a way that adds something beneficial to the area and to the people who suffered so much.