Realms of Remembered Violence: The Emergence of Mass Murder Memorials in the United States, 1986-2012 Jordan Hill Dissertation submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Social, Political, Ethical & Cultural Thought Marian B. Mollin, Chair Francois Debrix Howard S. Gartner David Cline Kathleen W. Jones September 23, 2014 Blacksburg, VA Keywords: Mass Murder Memorial, Memory, Ritual, Commemoration, Nationalism, Memorialization, Spatial History, U.S. History Copyright 2014, Jordan Hill Realms of Remembered Violence: The Emergence of Mass Murder Memorials in the United States, 1986-2012 Jordan Hill ABSTRACT This research explores the new tradition of creating mass murder memorials in the United States at the turn of the twenty-first century. Using written and oral history sources in combination with memorial designs, I explore the planning processes undertaken by five different communities: Virginia Tech, Columbine, University of Texas, Oklahoma City and Edmond, OK. I analyze what these case studies reveal about how changing cultural expectations and political needs transformed commemorative practices concerning violence in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. By exposing how the timely interventions of national figures increasingly shaped local commemorative aspirations, my research illuminates how the brief period of national unity in the immediate aftermath has been discursively and materially foregrounded as the heart of national public memory narratives of mass murder. I argue that at the turn of the twenty- first century the memory of victims of mass murders—assuming something akin to the role that fallen soldiers have played for the bulk of American history—are now viewed by a range of political, religious and cultural actors as a highly effective means of bolstering perceptions of local, organizational and national unity. This project contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on commemoration in three ways. First, I challenge the literature on memorials built in the immediate aftermath of violence and tragedy by illustrating how these memory sites are increasingly but the first stage of the material culture of public memory. Second, my theory of a ritualized assemblage develops the existing literature by forwarding a concept well suited to analyze the relationship of between seemingly disparate memory sites. Lastly, the rhetoric of what I call the Myth of the Slaughtered Citizen contributes to the literature on nationalism and commemoration by explaining how the victims of mass murder were culturally substituted into the commemorative role traditionally held by fallen soldiers to promote a sense of local and national unity. For my Family, whose support and love made everything possible. For Dr. Marian Mollin, who taught me how to be a scholar. And for all the people for whom mass murder is not merely a national public memory, but an intimate personal reality that has forever left a scar. iii Table of Contents FOREWORD: THE NEW AMERICAN TRADITION OF CONSTRUCTING MASS MURDER MEMORIALS............................................................................................................................................. 1 INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................... 9 REFRAMING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MEMORY, RITUAL & PLACE......................................................9 MASS MURDER MEMORIALS’ CONTRIBUTION TO THE COMMEMORATIVE CONVERSATION .................... 20 MEMORIALIZING VIOLENCE IN THE PATRIOTIC LANDSCAPE......................................................................... 29 CHAPTER 1 EDMOND, OKLAHOMA - A POTENT COMMEMORATIVE HARBINGER OF MASS MURDER MEMORIAL TRENDS AND COMMEMORATIVE EXPECTATIONS..............46 1.1 A Brief History of Yellow Ribbons in the United States.............................................................48 1.2 “What Do We Do?” Edmond’s Exclusive Memorial Process ....................................................54 1.3 Transforming Ephemeral Yellow Ribbons into a Permanent Memorial...........................60 1.4 From Symbolic Accretion to Ritualized Assemblage..................................................................65 1.5 The ‘Sculptural Life” of The Yellow Ribbon Memorial ..............................................................69 A POTENT HARBINGER OF THINGS TO COME................................................................................................... 76 CHAPTER 2 OKLAHOMA CITY - FROM SHADOWED GROUND TO SACRED SPACE: THE BIRTH OF A NATIONAL MASS MURDER MEMORIAL TRADITION, 1995-2001 ................80 THE OKLAHOMA CITY MODEL .................................................................................................................... 84 2.1.1 The Rhetoric of the Socio-Political Script Created by President Clinton.......................84 2.1.2 Defining “Public” in the Public Commemorative Process.....................................................94 2.1.3 Political Rhetoric and Public Process in the Memorial Mission Statement............... 105 THE MEMORIAL COMPLEX: CONCENTRIC CIRCLES IN THE NATIONAL LANDSCAPE .......................113 2.2.1 The Outdoor Symbolic Memorial................................................................................................. 118 3.2.2 The Memorial Museum..................................................................................................................... 124 2.2.3 The Oklahoma City Religious Ritualized Assemblage......................................................... 129 2.2.4 The Downtown Oklahoma City & Governmental Ritualized Assemblages................ 131 2.2.5 The Oklahoma State & Regional Ritualized Assemblages ................................................. 134 2.2.6 The United States’ Oklahoma City Bombing Ritualized Assemblage........................... 136 POLITICAL AND PUBLIC MEMORIES OF NATIONAL UNITY ...........................................................................137 CHAPTER 3 COLUMBINE - CROSSES ON REBEL HILL: CHRISTIAN RHETORIC AND COMMEMORATIVE CONFLICT, 1999-2007............................................................................... 142 3.1 OF PRESIDENTS AND PASTORS: National Unity Merges with Christian Faith............ 144 3.2 THE 15/13 DEBATE: Forgiveness, Conflict & Assemblages of Crosses ........................... 158 3.3 Memorializing Mass Murder Without Established Communal Bonds ............................ 172 3.4 Narrative Remembrances & Memorial Resistances in the Columbine Memorial ...... 191 MASS MURDER MEMORIALS AND AMERICAN IDENTITY AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURY.....................200 CHAPTER 4 UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS: STONES AT THE BASE OF THE TOWER: THE RETROSPECTIVE COMMEMORATION OF THE 1966 TOWER KILLINGS, 1999-2007.. 205 4.1 Commemoratively Creating “The Forty Acres,” 1910-1937 ................................................ 209 4.2 Thirty-Three Years of Commemorative Silence, 1966-1999 ............................................... 218 4.3 Reinventing Rituals & Reopening the Tower, 1986-1999..................................................... 227 4.4 Retrospective Memorialization of the 1966 Tower Killings, 1999-2007 ....................... 241 OLD MEMORIAL TRADITIONS IN A NEW MILLENNIUM.................................................................................257 iv CHAPTER 5 VIRGINIA TECH - HOKIE NATION: WAR, SPORTS, AND THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF MASS MURDER MEMORIALIZATION; 2007-2012 .......... 262 5.1 A Landscape of Soldiers and Sportsmen........................................................................................ 264 5.2 “WE WILL PREVAIL!”: Convocation, Hokie Nation & President Bush............................. 275 5.3 HOKIE STONE: Immediate Aftermath Memorials on the Drillfield.................................. 283 5.4 THE 32/33 DEBATE: Communal Dialogue or Administrative Threat?.......................... 291 5.5 Tom Tillar’s ‘University-Sanctioned’ Memorial Committee................................................. 300 5.6 Constructing a New Hokie Nation................................................................................................... 316 INSTITUTIONALIZING MASS MURDER MEMORIALIZATION..........................................................................330 CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSION - ESTABLISHING AN AMERICAN MEMORY AND TRADITION OF DOMESTIC MASS MURDER ...................................................................................................... 334 BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................................. 344 ARCHIVES AND COLLECTIONS..................................................................................................................344 ORAL HISTORIES .............................................................................................................................................344 PUBLICATIONS.................................................................................................................................................345 v FOREWORD: The New American Tradition of Constructing Mass Murder Memorials Until quite recently, events of mass murder… led almost exclusively to obliteration and rectification [of the site of the violence]. The first memorial I have been able to identify for a mass murder was