A Building Redeemed

Four were killed and four more wounded that awful day in 1993 when a government-hating gunman shot up the state Employment Development Department office in Oxnard in the bloodiest shooting spree in Ventura County history.

There was another casualty as well.

For six years, no tenant would rent the otherwise nondescript single-story building in Carriage Square on North C Street.

At last the somber site is getting a new occupant--and a fitting one at that. The New Life Community Church plans to move in and begin holding Sunday services there within six months.

“We want to replace the stigma on that building,” Pastor Steve Abraham told The Times. When the church’s selection committee walked through it, “All 12 of us had a real peace, a sense that this is where we are supposed to be.”

How to redeem the scenes of tragedies is a problem with no easy solution:

* In Oklahoma City, the chain-link fence surrounding the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building remains an impromptu shrine hung with a steadily renewed array of letters, photos and teddy bears in memory of the 168 people who died in the massive bomb blast of 1995.

* In the San Diego County community of San Ysidro, McDonald’s bulldozed the restaurant in which a gunman killed 21 people in 1984, then donated the property to the city. But it took six years of disputes among the survivors, franchise owners and the city before a seven-foot monument to the victims was erected on a community college satellite facility built at the location.

* In Port Hueneme, Police Chief Steve Campbell last month led a contingent of volunteers to collect and shelter the mementos of the victims of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 from rainy weather and high tides. Plans are being discussed for a permanent memorial to those who died.

The New Life Community Church has been holding its Sunday services in a hotel conference room since the congregation was founded two years ago. Even at a relative bargain-basement rate, the new quarters will cost the church about 30% more each month but will be available full time. A church in Newbury Park has donated desks, bookshelves and chairs and a Camarillo elementary school has donated child-sized chairs and tables for Sunday school classes.

May the thought of prayers and hymns in these rooms bring comfort to the families of those who died or were terrified that day, and bring this sad chapter of Ventura County history to a close.