It was a scene eerily reminiscent of July 12th, 2016 when hundreds, even thousands of ordinary citizens joined mourning police officers, first responders, judges, lawyers, courthouse workers and others in marching from the parking lot of the Berrien County Courthouse to the Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Lake Bluff Park. The one year anniversary of the attack on court officers by a jail inmate attempting to escape their grip looked a lot like that aftermath a year ago, and while the grief was still very real, it was perhaps a little less raw than a year ago when the entire community was in shock over the deaths of Officers Joseph Zangaro and Ron Kienzle.
One of the organizers of the event, retired St. Joseph Police Officer Deniece Fisher acted as emcee for both the step off from the courthouse parking lot and at the Police Memorial in Lake Bluff Park for the candlelight vigil. She thanked the community for coming out, calling the response overwhelming and sharing her appreciation and that of Greta Volkenstein, her fellow organizer.
Deniece asked everyone, “Keep in your thoughts and prayers not only the families of Ron and Joe, but the members of the courthouse family and all the first responders from that day.”
The Chaplain for the Berrien County Sheriff’s Department delivered the invocation, saying, “Tonight we come together as community and display to the world God’s proof that the light shines in darkness and the darkness did not overcome it. We bear witness to what the lives of Joe Zangaro and Ron Kienzle meant and continue to mean for family, for friends, for this community. These men reflected the light of God into some of the darkest places of our world and the darkness did not overcome it.”
A year ago this community was thrown into a time of confusion and loss, and a time of darkness, and today continued that healing process for many including Berrien County Judge Gary Bruce who delivered tonight’s message, saying first to family members on hand, “For you I can’t imagine what this last year has been like for you, but I know that every time we attend a memorial like this, it just brings all the emotions back to the surface. For your families to be here with our courthouse family means the world to us.”
Judge Bruce also thanked courthouse staff and officers who were on duty on July 11, 2016. “Especially,” he said, “those who showed incredible courage on that fateful day a year ago, like Angela Biggart from the Department of Corrections and Stacey Zabel from the Trial Court staff. They are not police officers, but women from the staff that really, really stepped up and helped on that day.”
Bruce also cited Dan Sullivan, then Chief of the Lincoln Township Police Department, who is now a new court officer. The judge told those at the vigil, “He (Dan Sullivan) happened to be in the building at the time of the attack and stood watch over the bodies of Ron and Joe for eight hours, never leaving their side throughout that day.”
Bruce thanked everyone for the support of the community, which he said has been outstanding, adding, “You cannot imagine for the people at the courthouse what that has meant to us. Especially the huge outpouring of the memorial walk a year ago with some 4,000 people on hand. That was absolutely stunning.”
The judge also shared a brief statement from the Chief Justice of the Michigan Supreme Court which I shared with you in an earlier report on Moody on the Market today.
Getting down to the heart of the matter, Judge Bruce told the hundreds of people on hand in a light rainfall, “For all of us a year ago, the only way I know how to put this is, our world was rocked. The work in the courthouse that we do, to many of us can get to be mundane. We do the same things, in and out, we get into a rhythm, we have our good days we have our bad days, we have busy days we have slower days, but basically it’s like any other job. We interact with our court workers, and others always with the expectation that tomorrow is going to be the same. Then we found out on July 11, 2016 our lives were forever changed because, under the most awful circumstances, we found that we were operating on the assumption that every day would play out like another ordinary day.”
As audience members struggled to keep their small handheld candles lit in the breeze and sprinkling rain, Bruce also noted, “We knew we had to go on, and we knew that we had to serve the public just as Joe and Ron did for their entire working lives, and we had to do it without those two gentlemen and their steady presence in our courthouse. So everything for us now is marked before and after July 11th, because nothing is the same anymore. The deaths of these two were shocking. We experienced every emotion imaginable. Grief, fear and even anger. Since that day I’ve thought about July 11th every day. The shock of that days is always there and always present.”
Saying, “We’re here now a year later and we did go on, but we’re thinking about it again,” Bruce began to shift the focus to the exemplary lives lived by officers Zangaro and Kienzle and he shared a fairly familiar poem regarding the story of “the dash on a tombstone.” That’s the dash that represents the full life between the posted date of birth and date of death and the importance of what we do during that dash no matter how long or how short it might be.
He pointed to the fruitful and fulfilling lives of public service that the two slain officers lived in that dash and reminded everyone to “mind your dash.”
A police honor guard marched to the back of the monument at the beginning, stood vigil throughout the ceremony, and following the playing of taps marched in retreat to the massive American flag suspended overhead from the aerial ladders of two local fire trucks.
Multiple police squad cars from local departments and the Berrien County Motorcycle team lead the memorial march and held traffic at bay while the marchers made their way several blocks from the courthouse to Lake Bluff Park.
Singers Katie Preston and Teri Freehling sang God Bless America and Amazing Grace respectively at the beginning and the end of the ceremonies.
Blue ribbons and vigil candles were shared by organizers for those in attendance, and colleagues of the two officers were invited to a memorial toast afterward at Babe’s Lounge on Riverview Drive in Benton Harbor.