An American Tragedy Remembered

As politicians and educators spoke to cameras nearby, Bertha Alicia Gonzalez remembered the day six years ago when a crazed gunman stole the lives of 21 people, including several of her best friends. Gonzalez held her hand to her face and cried.

“We pray together, cry together, go to the cemetery together and embrace in pain together,” said Gonzalez, who has lived in San Ysidro for 30 years. “The pain is still there.”

Gonzalez watched groundbreaking ceremonies Wednesday for a memorial at the former site of the San Ysidro McDonald’s, where James Oliver Huberty committed the country’s largest single-day mass slaying on July 18, 1984. Huberty killed 21 people before being shot and killed by police.

About 100 people--relatives and friends of the victims, educators, politicians, and the press--showed up for the morning ceremony, the culmination of six years of argument over what should happen to the three-quarter-acre site wedged between Interstate 5 and West San Ysidro Boulevard.

Facing the boulevard, the $50,000 monument--21 six-sided granite columns arranged symmetrically--should be completed in six months, according to school officials.

The site is now owned by Chula Vista’s Southwestern College, which has constructed a building for a satellite college behind the spot where the monument will stand.

The columns, which will be from 1 to 7 feet tall, represent the massacre victims and the resilience of the San Ysidro community, said Dr. Serafin A. Zasueta, dean and director of the satellite. The monument was designed by a former architecture student at the college, Roberto Valdes Jr.

Gonzalez, for one, is still upset that the city chose to sell the land to the college district instead of building a park.

“It was a political manipulation by whoever was involved,” said Gonzalez, the publisher of Ahora Now, a community newspaper. “It’s such a little thing. The people who passed away and those who are still living deserve” more.

Edgar Hernandez’s 11-year-old brother, Omarr, was the first victim to be identified after the massacre. At Wednesday’s ceremony, Hernandez, 23, recalled his memories of that deadly day, when he saw on TV his brother lying on the ground.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “That’s all they did, they just showed my brother.”

Francisca Lopez Aquino told reporters she’s glad the site will be part of a college.

“It’s OK, it’s only a little bit, but it’s the way we will remember them,” said Aquino, whose daughter Paulina, 21, died from Huberty’s shots.

Two months after the shooting, McDonald’s Corp. major shareholder Joan Kroc had the building razed and donated the tract to the city.

For several years, the only memorial on the site was a crude clapboard structure that bore the names of the victims and eulogies--in Spanish and English--beside vandals’ graffiti.

Meanwhile, there was division in the small, heavily Latino community over what should be built, with some residents favoring a full park and interdenominational chapel, while others wished that no reminders of the attack remain.

Some local businessmen favored selling the lot, then appraised at $500,000, parking spaces for nearby shops and using the proceeds to build a park nearby.

Politicians argued over the land’s fate until February, 1988, when the San Diego City Council decided by a 5-4 vote to sell it to Southwestern for $40,000, about 10% of the original asking price. Proceeds from the sale will improve San Ysidro parks.

Part of the deal was a requirement for the college to build the memorial. Half of that money has come from private donations. The largest gift was from Catellus Development, a $15,000 donation.

Maria Neves-Perman, a San Ysidro schoolteacher who lost three students in the massacre, organized the fund raising for the memorial as president of the college’s board of trustees.