Youth’s Death Mobilizes San Clemente : * Family, Friends and a City Seek to Give Meaning to Steve Woods’ Violent End

The senseless death of San Clemente teen-ager Steve Woods has produced a stunning reaction within the community, as a whole city appears to go through the grieving process of denial, anger and finally acceptance. The funeral for the 17-year-old a week ago may have been the emotional pinnacle; it was remarkable for the positive messages it produced, the vows to make the young man’s death count, to give it meaning.

San Clemente was mourning on the same day this month that President Clinton, speaking in Nashville, was deploring the deterioration of the fabric of American life. The images of young people mourning at the funeral were potent reminders of the national scourge of violence.

Some of youngsters were facing the loss of death maybe for the first time. Woods died almost a month after being speared in the head with a metal rod by alleged gang members who attacked his car in an altercation in a beach parking lot.

These youngsters, reared with a flood of violent images on television and in the movies, suddenly were coming to terms with the effects of real-life violence in a community’s life.

The manager of a local restaurant where Woods worked tried to find a hopeful message in a day of great pain. Alison Moore said that the loss of this promising young life would lead those in attendance to resolve to “make it safer for our children and our community.” The Rev. James King, pastor of St. Andrew’s By the Sea United Methodist Church, said that the community must move to work as Woods’ mother Kathy had asked, to be sure that work to find ways to end the “senseless cycle of violence.”

There is nothing quite so sobering as an experience of community loss. But if the meetings and protests it has produced strengthen community resolve, the loss of one young life will leave some meaningful legacy.