A national outpouring of sympathy has given staff in Gabrielle Giffords's office strength, writes LARA MARLOWEin Tucson
TO EXPLAIN the catastrophe that has befallen Gabrielle Giffords’s office, CJ Karamargin, her communications director, takes me into the conference room where a poster-size image of the wounded politician and some 15 staff members is poised on an easel.
It looks like a school photograph, with the subjects standing in straight rows, beaming into the camera. Those were happier days, a year before the mass shooting that killed six people and wounded 14 others on January 8th.
“Congresswoman Giffords”, Karamargin begins, nodding towards the blonde woman with the engaging smile on the left of the image.
“She steps into a room and the room lights up,” he says reverently.
Giffords has become famous since a deranged 22-year-old attempted to assassinate her. The entire country is following her recovery.
A grey-haired man with glasses stands beside Giffords.
“Ron Barber, district director – shot in the cheek and leg,” says Karamargin.
As he lay on the ground, gushing blood from an artery, Barber shooed away an aide with medical training, saying, “Make sure you stay with Gabby.”
“Pam Simon, retired public school teacher, worked in community outreach – wounded,” says Karamargin.
His eyes track over to the tall, handsome young man on the far right of the photograph.
“Gabe Zimmerman, director of community outreach, fatality.”
Karamargin pauses to master his emotion.
“Gabe, Ron . . . These are people I know and love,” he says.
“I was just doing an interview with local television about Gabe and the cameraman had to stop because he was crying. Gabe had an advanced degree in social work. His passion was helping people . . .
“We were buddies,” Karamargin continues.
“Gabe and I travelled together for Obama’s inauguration in Washington. We went to museums together. He loved history. A couple of days after the inauguration, we went to the Lincoln Memorial.
“It was very cold. All I wanted to do was go some place warm, but Gabe had to read every word of the speeches carved on the walls.”
Zimmerman (30) was engaged to marry Kelly O’Brien, a Tucson nurse. Is she okay? I ask.
“No. The family is taking it very hard,” Karamargin says.
“We are all taking it very hard.”
Giffords’s staff reopened her office on Monday “for one reason, because Gabrielle Giffords would want us to,” says Karamargin.
“We are sending a message that acts of violence will not deter us from doing our job. Our office is open. Our government is open. Our democracy is open.”
Giffords’s staff wear a loop of white ribbon with a black stripe down the middle. White for peace; black in mourning for those killed in the shooting. The office bustles, with an air of forced cheerfulness.
When he drove past the office in a two-storey Spanish-style complex the day after the shooting, Karamargin says he was so moved to see the memorial that he had to pull over.
Only last spring, Tea Party protesters, angered by the passage of the healthcare Bill, congregated by the hundreds in the same place. Hours after Giffords voted for the Bill, someone smashed in the glass door of her office.
Now the corner is inundated with candles, stuffed animals, flowers, potted plants, handwritten notes and placards. A constant stream of visitors stop to pay their respects.
A similar vigil has sprung up outside the University Medical Center, where Giffords lies in intensive care, her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, at her side.
The mass shooting could have happened anywhere, Karamargin says.
“What we saw on Saturday was the worst side of humanity. With the reaction, we see the best side of humanity. The outpouring of grief and sympathy are giving us strength. I never expected the response to a tragedy like this to be so loving and tender.”
Outside, I talk to university students, an occupational therapist, a church administrator, a restaurant manager. They are Christian and Jewish, black, white and Hispanic.
“You do not have to know someone personally to connect, to feel the love and peace in them,” says Connie Miller, explaining her attachment to Giffords.
Renée Brown is studying criminal justice at Northern Arizona University. Like Giffords, she is Jewish. The 19-year-old student has brought a bouquet of roses and carnations. She says she has wept every day since the shooting.
Brown volunteered for Giffords’s campaign last autumn, because “she’s a kind, warm person. I love her smile.” She hated telephoning voters, “but it was worth it”.
Jeffrey Berry (40) is an African-American restaurant manager. “She needs to continue doing what she is doing,” he says when I ask what he is writing on a form to slip into the message box left by Giffords’s staff. “She is a great leader.”
Does Berry understand the hatred of government that seems so widespread, that may have affected the gunman? “I live in the United States of America because I want to be here,” he replies. “I don’t want to be anywhere else. We have so many freedoms, but this is what comes with it.”