Long Beach will begin discussing how it will remember the 931 residents who have died due to COVID-19 during the May 11 City Council meeting in which Mayor Robert Garcia is asking for a community advisory group to be formed to to plan for a memorial.
Deaths in Long Beach have begun to slow with the city having not reported a single death in over two weeks. But the city endured a grim winter where daily double-digit death reports from the city were common.
In one week in early January, 87 residents died. Garcia lost his mother and stepfather to the virus last summer.
“No matter how or when this pandemic is finally defeated, Long Beach deserves a focal point for people to express their grief and mourn for all those we have lost. A COVID-19 Memorial in Long Beach could be an opportunity for residents to pay homage and remember those we lost to the virus,” Garcia said in the memo.
Garcia announced the future construction of a memorial during the annual Building a Better Long Beach presentation in March. In an interview with the Post he said that the city wanted people to be able to remember the pandemic and have a place where they could mourn.
Garcia offered a few details of who he thought the memorial should include like frontline workers and nurses but also the potential for the names of the dead to be included, if their families agreed to it, Garcia said in March.
“People that were lost are more than just numbers or data,” Garcia said in March.
The location of the memorial would have to be outside or at some other publicly accessible space, Garcia said. He said he hoped that the commission could come up with a number of suggestions over a 6-12 month timeline.
Before Garcia’s announcement, a handful of artists and community members shared their ideas on what a proper memorial might look like for the victims of the pandemic. The suggestions ranged from statues to poems and even murals.
Garcia’s request did not specify how much a memorial might cost or what city funding could be used to pay for it but his memo said that city reserves could be used to construct the memorial.