A few minutes before a prayer vigil started in Lake Forest’s Market Square Thursday night, Cathy Alland sat on a bench contemplating how the carnage in Highland Park came so close as her children and grandchildren attended the Highland Park parade and were only a block away when the shooting erupted.
“I’m having a hard time dealing with it. They are my kids and my grandchildren, who are only 2 and 5. They were so close and they were supposed to be sitting there, and at the last minute they moved down the street,” said Alland of Lake Forest.
Still shaken more than 72 hours later, Alland joined a group of 200 people gathered on the Market Square lawn as nine local clergy members offered prayers and reflections in light of the horrific shooting rampage that took the lives of seven people and injured dozens of others.
“I just wanted to share and see how other people are dealing with it,” Alland said.
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At the start of the vigil, the Rev. Clint Roberts of the First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest, who organized the service, noted how the city usually holds a concert on that same spot on summer Thursday evenings.
“Tonight, let this be a different type of gathering,” he said. “A gathering of broken hearts, a gathering of steadfast love. A recognition we need, and we need one another.”
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With musical interludes, the pastors offered a series of psalms from both the Old and New Testament in light of the July 4 massacre in Highland Park.
“These are prayers of sorrow and lament,” Roberts said after the service. “This is a vigil to support our sister city of Highland Park. To lift up all of the citizens, particularly the victims of the shooting.
“We are all feeling the impact,” he continued. “We are all struggling to make sense out of what is senseless.”
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The Rev. Mike Woodruff of Christ Church of Lake Forest noted how he did an internet search for a prayer for a mass shooting and Psalm 31 from the Old Testament appeared.
“I’m sad that there is now such a thing as a prayer for a mass shooting, but I am encouraged at the way people are stepping up to care for each other,” he said after the service.
The vigil’s attendees included state Sen. Julie Morrison, a participant in the Highland Park parade. Morrison explained how she has been staying active since the shooting.
“I’ve been going nonstop, talking with people at community events and trying to be in the neighborhood,” she said. “People want to understand, and what we might do going forward. Highland Park is our next-door neighbor.
“This is not just those 30,000 people who have been affected; it is the whole North Shore area,” she said. “It tells us that no one is immune, and it could happen absolutely anywhere. We all care about each other, and that is what this is.”
However, Morrison vows she will never be part of a parade ever again.
“Until gun laws change, and I feel there is more reasonable certainty of safety, I won’t ask my family to do this,” she said. “That’s too bad because parades are fun.”
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There were others who spoke chillingly about the proximity of the shooting, and how it has shaken up the entire area.
“This individual is from our community; this isn’t a foreign agent, enemy of the public,” Roberts said after the service. “This is who we are. I think the scope of that sorrow runs deep. We are all asking ourselves how will this scourge of gun violence afflict our nation in such a peculiar and outrageous way.”
Lake Forest Mayor George Pandaleon spoke of his working relationship with Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering, and how she was thrust into the national spotlight Monday.
“It really put a lump in my throat,” Pandaleon said. “That could just as easily have been me having to do that.”
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