300 at Vigil Light Candles to ‘Remember Nicole’ : Demonstration: With poems, chants and personal recollections, crowd at Main Beach in Laguna honors slaying victim and signifies its support for women who have suffered from domestic violence.

Nicole Brown Simpson, who lit candles in her home nearly every night of her adult life, would have been overwhelmed by the constellation of tiny flames burning in her honor here Sunday evening, her sister told a crowd gathered for a candlelight vigil.

Cupping their hands to shelter the flames from a cool ocean breeze, more than 300 people gathered at Main Beach in Laguna Beach to honor the memory of the slain former wife of football great O. J. Simpson.

“Nicole is looking down on all of this and she’s up there floating around with a smile on her face,” said Tanya Brown, standing on a chair and speaking into a bullhorn. “This is what she would like. A night never went by in her house without her lighting a candle. She loved candles.”

Nicole’s parents, Lou and Juditha Brown, also attended the two-hour vigil. Surveying the crowd, a visibly moved Juditha Brown told a reporter, “It’s just wonderful. It shows that they care.”

The crowd, for the most part, was composed of women clad in white and wearing buttons bearing the words “Remember Nicole.” For more than an hour, dozens of women and men took turns holding the bullhorn and reading poems, telling tear-filled personal stories or leading soft chants of “Stop Domestic Violence.”

Many in the crowd said they came not only to show their support for the victims of domestic violence but to protest O. J. Simpson’s acquittal last week of the murders of his ex-wife and her friend Ronald Goldman.

“I’ve been so upset about the verdict,” said Joan Roach, 50, of Laguna Beach. “I thought if I did something I’d be able to settle down.”

The event was sponsored by local women’s organizations, including Human Options, which operates two Orange County shelters for battered women and plans to open a third in February.

Jeri Rimel, a director at Human Options, said the vigil was organized in response to a barrage of phone calls the shelter and other local women’s groups received after O. J. Simpson was acquitted of the double homicide last week.

“There were so many people calling our office and hot line, just feeling concerned, frustrated, and wanting to have a voice,” Rimel said. “Laguna is a real active and demonstrative city. The Browns are neighbors and people wanted to do something.”

The Browns are longtime residents of nearby Dana Point, where Nicole attended Dana Hills High School. Dana Point is also the home of the Nicole Brown Simpson Charitable Foundation for Battered Women, a nonprofit organization started by the Brown family last year.

Shelters such as Human Options have reported heavy volumes of calls from abused women, as well as a surge in offers from volunteers and donations from financial supporters since details of the turbulent relationship between O. J. and Nicole began surfacing in the wake of the June 12, 1994, murders.

During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Simpson as a violent husband who had beaten and abused his wife throughout their 17-year relationship. They played a harrowing audio tape of a 911 call Nicole made to police in 1993, and reminded jurors that Simpson pleaded no contest to spousal battery in 1989.

The calls to local shelters slowed as the Simpson trial wore on, Rimel said, but rose sharply last week, with many women calling to say they were dismayed that a man they believed was guilty had been set free.

Some of these women, Rimel said, used a new verb to describe their fears. “They’re saying their partners are going to O. J. them.”

The vigil began at 7 p.m., and a small crowd of about 50 people slowly multiplied over the next few hours. Many women in attendance said that they had been battered by their husbands and that they came to the vigil to show other victims they are not alone.

“When I was going through it, there was no help,” said Patricia Tew, 49, of Anaheim. “Now there is all this support. Women have to realize that there is help, and that people do understand.”

The vigil attracted reporters from half a dozen media outlets, including several television stations, whose camera lights shone brightly on the faces of the speakers at the center of the crowd.

Though most in attendance were women, several dozen men also turned out, including Daniel Kehl, 46, who said he came to the vigil partly to show that while some men do batter their wives, most have no tolerance for such behavior.

“In many ways society still condones male brutality of females,” said Kehl, carrying a candle enveloped in tinfoil. “This is one of the few things that I can do--make a stance against abuse just by being here.”

Minutes later, a bespectacled man held a small boy on his shoulder as he grabbed the bullhorn and urged parents to teach their children that domestic violence is wrong. As he did so, another man in the crowd--Lou Brown, father of Nicole--nodded his head in approval.

Asked how he felt about the gathering in his slain daughter’s honor, Lou Brown replied softly, “You know the cause. You see the crowd. How would you feel?”