A few months after The Station fire, mourners placed 100 candles, for the 100 people who died, in the shape of a heart on the earth where the nightclub once stood. They talked about a proper memorial; this was sacred ground.
But it's also become an ideological battleground.
There is a loose community from the fire. It started with the 432 people who are believed to have been in the club on Feb. 20. Those who survived belong, as do those who cared about someone who died. They were thrust together by tragedy, and now they are divided by factions whose passions fly in meetings and online discussions, on Station support Web sites with nicknames such as "vent-a-rage."
"I've read e-mail that I'm a horrible person and I should burn in hell," said Victoria Potvin, president of the nonprofit Station Family Fund; the fund infuriated some by accepting charity money from the band Great White to help people with rent and food and such. Blood money, it was called by dissenters.
Of all the friction, Sarah Mancini, whose son Keith Mancini died in the fire, theorized: "You know, time has passed, the shock is over, now there is the anger and bitterness and confusion. My head is clear and my loss is here, now what?"
Now they plan the memorial, and they delve into divisive questions.
Whose names belong on it?
Only those who died, some family members said at a meeting of The Station Memorial Foundation on Monday night at the Warwick Public Library. The foundation is a nonprofit, one of two incorporated groups working, separately, toward the memorial.
One mother said she couldn't visit the spot where her son died for six months. His 19th birthday has come and gone since the fire. A white-haired man in a New York Giants jacket said proudly, "My son Ben was an architect."
Kim Jalette, the treasurer of Station Memorial Foundation, said survivors should be honored at the site, but not on the memorial. "The main goal is listing those who died, not survivors."
Murmurs of approval and, "that's right, that's right," rose up.
Vietnam veterans won't find their names on their memorial wall, it was reasoned. Also, no one has released an official list of Station patrons. What if someone lied, and said they were there?
And though no one said it, listing survivors might mean engraving in marble the name Jack Russell, the leader of Great White, or those of the Derderian brothers, operators of the club.
None of these arguments ease Linda Fisher, whose burns mar her face and body like raw, red cords. She wasn't at the library Monday. She finds it hard even to go Christmas shopping.
"Everyone has got this huge plan for the 100 people who died, and to hell with the other 300 people there. But hell, seven weeks in a hospital and the past 9 1/2 months of misery. What -- no one is going to remember that I was there?"
THESE EMOTIONS ring familiar to Mary Fetchet, whose 24-year-old son, Bradley, died Sept. 11, 2001. He traded equities on the 89th floor of the World Trade Center's Tower 2.
Fetchet, a clinical social worker, is director of Voices of Sept. 11, part of the fabric of advocacy groups created after the terrorist attacks. Two years later, the organizations are still trying to agree on a memorial at ground zero. Those connected to a large, public tragedy have a bond -- "the void and trauma of a sudden, horrific loss," she said.
"At the same time, you have a group of people from different backgrounds," who don't always mesh. There is an evolution, she said, as people begin to work together.
As for survivors and family members, she said, "their journeys are different."
After the fire at The Station, peer-support groups began at a clinic in Warwick. Families cried in one room, survivors in another.
"They don't mix well at all," said Jody King, whose brother, Tracy King, died in the fire. He said the survivors saw things that the families don't want to hear about.
At one peer session, Linda Fisher, who was burned, mistakenly walked into the family-counseling room with another survivor.
"Someone was speaking, and they all got really quiet and looked at us," Fisher said. "I haven't had anyone say it directly, but it feels like: why is this person here, and not my kid? You don't know what they're thinking because they don't look you in the eye."
Jody King said the families don't want to see the burns. "You see those burns and you immediately think of what your loved one looks like."
Other family members -- not part of those meetings -- have felt the strain. Sarah Mancini said she told her son's friends, who lived, "don't avoid me." She told them they still had a job to do, and that's why they were spared. Her son Keith's job was done and God took him home.
Diane Mattera said it is both healing and hard to see the friend of her daughter, Tammy Mattera-Housa.
"I'm glad, of course, she got out, and she's alive," Mattera said. "It's also very hard because, you know, my daughter isn't here. It's almost like a two-edged sword."
The rift over the memorial illustrates this divide.
The Station Memorial Foundation formed in July to raise money to buy 211 Cowesett Ave., and place a memorial there. The foundation wished to build a memorial in a way that didn't antagonize the grieving. No money from the band or from the Town of West Warwick. Families were angry at the town because inspectors missed the flammable foam on the walls of the nightclub. The foundation also envisioned that the memorial would be for those who died.
"There would be no memorial if 100 people had not died," said the Rev. Susan Asselin, a director.
Ms. Asselin, a nondenominational minister who leads services at the Station site on the 20th of every month, said that after the foundation formed, she started getting "unpleasant" messages about "what the memorial should be and who should control it." She said the messages were from a vocal group of survivors.
She said the survivors went to House Speaker William J. Murphy. Murphy, a West Warwick native, had said publicly just after the fire that the site should remain vacant for a memorial.
Todd King, a survivor, and leader of The Station Family Fund, said he did e-mail Murphy, to provide him with the group's own petition in support of a memorial. He said members of The Station Family Fund went to meet with Murphy. King said they weren't trying to take over the memorial. He said he was concerned with how survivors had been portrayed in the contentious Internet community formed after the fire: "They said we stampeded over their loved ones."
Family and friends of those who died say they've been lambasted, too. When they wanted to take down the wood crosses at the site because of Hurricane Isabel, they were chewed out online.
Murphy, the House speaker, and his staff met with the different memorial groups and worked with Jeanne-Marie DiMasi, president of the West Warwick Town Council, to form The Station Nightclub Procurement Fund on Sept. 29. DiMasi and Murphy say the purpose of the fund is to make a memorial happen -- "to do the job," DiMasi said.
The plan is for Triton Realty Limited Partnership, the company that owned the nightclub building, to donate the Cowesett Avenue land to the fund. Since that could be seen as depriving Triton of an asset, the fund would raise donations to match the value of the land, and hold the money in an escrow account. The corporation will eventually turn the land over to the town, which could keep it up like a public park, DiMasi said.
DiMasi and Murphy said the memorial will be designed with input from survivors and families. "No one will be excluded from the process," Murphy said.
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Those wishing to help victims' families and survivors of The Station fire can give to:
The Station Family Fund, 300 Quaker Lane, Box 214, Warwick, RI 02886
Or to:
The Station Nightclub Fire Relief Fund, in care of The Rhode Island Foundation, 1 Union Station, Providence, RI 02903.
