Honoring their memory

For Elka Fernandez, Saturday night's candlelight vigil honoring the memory of murder victims was a first.

Her son, JoJo Brandstatt, 18, died just over six months ago, on Feb. 5, when he was taken to an isolated green on a West Valley golf course and shot.

For Ken Meldrum of Orem, the vigil is an annual tradition, one she started 10 years ago to remember her 20-year-old son, Christopher Aaron Meldrum, who was shot at point-blank range with a shotgun in his bedroom Jan. 8, 1997.

The two women have almost nothing in common, outside the fact that they are survivors of violence that has robbed them of a loved one.

"It's a grief like no other," Meldrum said. "Society doesn't allow us to talk about it a lot."

Saturday night Fernandez and Meldrum joined with about 60 other survivors in a memorial service in the Salt Lake International Peace Gardens for the 2009 National Day of Remembrance for Murder Victims, sponsored by the Utah Chapter of Parents of Murdered Children.

"It helps a little. I wish it could help more," said Fernandez about the vigil and the monthly meetings of the chapter's Grief Support Group. She was accompanied by a large contingent of family members wearing black T-shirts with her son's photograph on the front and his name on the back.

"It's good because people don't know how it feels until it happens to them, so it's good that we can find each other and relate with each other," she said.

Kaylynn Schaelling attended the vigil to remember her brother, KellyO Shaelling, who was killed in Salt Lake City 11 years ago by a gunshot to the head while he was making rounds for Neighborhood Watch. She said the crime has been hard on everyone who knew her brother.

"When someone is murdered, it affects the lives of everybody that loves them. It doesn't just kill a person, it kills a family," she said.

Those thoughts were echoed by Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank, who said the Trolley Square shooting on Feb. 12, 2007, brought home the fact that violent crime on any level has a broad impact.

"After that shooting, I had people approach me all over the city who talked about how they had planned to be at the mall or they knew someone who was in the mall at the time," he said. "That's when I realized that when we have a single crime in our community, it is not a secluded incident, that the entire community is affected."

Burbank, who also read a proclamation by Gov. Gary R. Herbert making Saturday a day of remembrance for murder victims, praised those at the vigil for continuing to fight against violent crime.

Schaelling said the Parents of Murdered Children monthly support group meetings bring together people who share an experience that is incomprehensible to most.