Lessons on Loss
How a school community heals after a student dies.
By Cindy Long
Because it was Halloween, 16-year-old Melody Ross was dressed up in a Supergirl costume the night she was shot.
She had just left the sold-out Woodrow Wilson High School homecoming football game in Long Beach, California, and was sitting shoulder to shoulder with friends on the school steps, chatting about their team’s loss. But before they could make their way inside for the big dance, gunfire erupted, sending hundreds running for cover. Witnesses say between five and seven shots were fired by warring rival gangs.
“Melody Ross was an innocent bystander, caught in the crossfire,” says Wilson High head counselor Gayle Marshburn.
The AP honors student and track athlete died at the hospital half an hour later that Friday night.
The following Monday, nearly all of Ross’s 4,000 fellow students filed into school stunned and saddened. Nobody wanted to stay home, but they couldn’t imagine going to class, either. They wanted to talk about what happened. They wanted to hug and cry. They wanted to leave flowers and notes and stuffed bears at a huge memorial erected for Melody at the site of the shooting. But mostly, they wanted to experience the love and support of the school community and mourn the loss of their friend and classmate together.
Photos by Jeff Gritchen/Long Beach Press-Telegram
It’s a grim fact of life that every year students from schools across the country will die in accidents, by violence, or from disease.
“It’s a sad thing to say, but we usually lose at least one student every year,” says Suzanne Huckaba, the head counselor at Central High