The State - News from Nov. 19, 1987

The ninth annual memorial service for the 913 victims of the Jonestown massacre was held in Oakland. It included a prayer, a poem reading and remarks from some who escaped the massacre. “Too many people died to forget something like this,” said Jynona Norwood, 36, of San Francisco, who organized the memorial at Evergreen Cemetery. “They are definitely saying something from the grave--don’t get involved in cults,” she said. Norwood lost 27 relatives, including her mother, in a Guyana jungle on Nov. 18, 1978, when the Rev. Jim Jones of the Peoples Temple ordered his followers to consume a cyanide-laced soft drink in a mass suicide. Earlier, five people--including U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, a California Democrat--were killed and six injured in a shooting by Peoples Temple followers as they were boarding an airplane after a visit to Jones’ agricultural mission at Jonestown.