Flowers and Prayers for Nicole Simpson

Some knelt in prayer, and others simply left flowers at the grave here Sunday.

Most had never met Nicole Brown Simpson, whose slaying a year ago today triggered one of the century’s most sensational trials and international obsession with whether O.J. Simpson killed his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Lyle Goldman.

“I came to pay my respects,” said Ludette David of Lake Forest, who visited a relative’s grave at Ascension Cemetery and then walked to Simpson’s final resting place to say a prayer. “She died so suddenly and without a chance to do whatever she wanted to do in life.”

Those sentiments were repeated among the two dozen people who visited Simpson’s grave Sunday. Some left their car engines running while they quickly scooted across the cemetery lawn to stand silently for a minute or two. One man rode up on his bicycle, wearing stereo headphones.

The bicyclist, garbed in cycling togs, parked his bike near the grave where he spent a few quiet moments. He then mounted the bicycle and left.

Most, such as Dandy Villanueva, 20, couldn’t believe he was standing at Simpson’s grave.

A woman who said she was from Texas entered the cemetery, got out of her car, and then searched until she came to the marker that reads, “Always in Our Heart--Nicole Brown Simpson, 1959-1994.”

“I just can’t believe that this is really her, this is where she is,” said the woman, who declined to be identified.

She got down on one knee and, with care, reached over to the far side of the marker and put a colorful red, green and chrome pinwheel that quickly caught a playful breeze that spun it round and round.

Next, she placed a bouquet of baby’s breath and red roses wrapped in cellophane on the marker’s left side, then another bouquet of roses on the right side. With that done, she stood up and bowed her head silently.

“I hope the family doesn’t mind that I put these here,” the woman said. “I just wanted to spend time with her. I didn’t want to mess up the family’s visit or anything. Do you know if they’re coming here today?”

Jennifer Thunstrom, 25, of Tustin, who visited the grave with her cousin, said that with all the surrounding publicity, too many people have lost the sense of the actual crime.

“People get wrapped up in the court case now,” Thunstrom said. “They forget about the reality.”

By afternoon, others had brought more bouquets and flowers from home gardens. There were fresh gardenias, roses and daisies. Someone also had placed a tiny, ceramic angel that knelt at the grave.

As Jackie Smick, 29, of La Habra saw the angel, it touched something inside her.

“People say she was no angel,” Smick said, “but nobody deserves to die like the way she did. She was just 35 years old. She was such a beautiful girl. No matter who you are, this whole case touches everybody’s life.”

Smick, who is Thunstrom’s cousin, said part of Simpson’s legacy to women is “that they can get out of that marriage before it’s too late.”

She placed two red roses wrapped in foil, which she had clipped from her garden, on Simpson’s marker. Then she and Thunstrom knelt in prayer.

“Some people think that the court trial is just too much and they’re sick of it,” Smick said. “But it was a tragedy. How can you think of it without worrying or wanting to know the outcome?”

A candlelight vigil will be held today for Nicole Brown Simpson, Ronald Goldman and other victims of violence at 9:30 p.m. at Salt Creek Beach Park, 23841 Stonehill Drive, Dana Point.