Q&A: As Pulse memorial falters, Las Vegas leader shares lessons in commemorating tragedy

After nearly four years in the design phase, plans for a memorial to honor the lives of those killed in the Las Vegas Strip massacre in October 2017—the nation’s deadliest mass shooting— have been approved by the Clark County commission earlier this month.

Meanwhile, plans for a memorial for the nation’s second-deadliest mass shooting, the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, are wavering following a series of setbacks.

The onePULSE Foundation, the nonprofit formed to build a memorial, said it will not be building at the nightclub property, where 49 people were killed in 2016, after one of its owners refused to donate the site. And earlier this year, previously approved plans to build an architecturally-acclaimed museum and memorial in remembrance of the victims fell through for being too expensive.

From its inception, onePULSE has operated independently of local governments and largely outside public view, and was run until recently by Barbara Poma, the nightclub’s owner who has faced scrutiny and litigation from survivors of the mass shooting. Poma exited the foundation in April.

In Clark County, government officials are in the process of selecting a nonprofit that will oversee the construction and maintenance of the memorial project and MGM Resorts International has donated two acres on the northeast corner of the concert site off Reno Avenue and Giles Street where the killings occurred.

While the One October Memorial Committee worked to design a memorial for the Las Vegas Strip massacre, people affected by the shooting at the Route 91 Harvest Festival were referred to the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center for support.

The center, which is staffed by state and county officials as well as other community partners, serves as a resource and referral center and helps impacted people with things such as legal aid and insurance issues.

A partnership of local governments and the United Way offered similar services to Pulse survivors at the Orlando United Assistance Center.

But the $8.5 million federal grant used by OUAC to pay for staff and free services ran out in late 2019 and Gov. Ron DeSantis vetoed funding for the program in 2020. In addition, the OneOrlando Fund, which distributed more than $30 million to survivors and victims of the shooting, closed in 2017.

In 2021, with the city’s ongoing support, OUAC became part of The Center Orlando and still assists people affected by Pulse. On its website, the organization says it can assist with problems relating to mental and physical health, family relationships, financial difficulties and immigration or legal issues, among others.

Funding for other groups that launched after the massacre has dwindled, as the need has grown.

In its capacity, the Las Vegas center has assisted around 10,000 people with accessing help, like disability benefits, that they may be eligible for after experiencing trauma. In other cases, the center has helped those impacted by restructuring financially if they are dealing with a lower income or with housing issues.

Tennille Pereira, director of the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center and chair of the One October committee, spoke with the Orlando Sentinel about how government officials and community members worked together with the families of victims and survivors to design a memorial.

The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Question: Could you share some insight into the structure of the One October Memorial Committee and how many times it met?

Answer: The memorial committee was made up of seven members, and we had one half that was the professional committee. There was a public arts administrator, a local artist, as well as an architect. Then, on the other side, we had our impacted community representatives. So we had a family member who had lost her sister, an injured survivor and a first responder. It was kind of in the middle of bridging the two perspectives.

We really worked through it for about four years. Regular public meetings were once a month and those were public meetings, online as well as in-person. There were also meetings to put together agendas, and things like that.

Q: Was Clark County the entity that put this committee together? Who was in charge of forming this?

A: It was mostly the Clark County commissioners. So our previous governor [Stephen Sisolak] was a commissioner when the shooting happened and our former sheriff [Joe Lombardo, who currently serves as the governor of Nevada] worked together and were the public face providing the updates and all the press conferences and all of that stuff. They were really close to the incident and they knew that it would be important to do a memorial. Commissioners appointed half of [the committee members] and then former Governor Sisolak appointed the other half.

Q: This was a process that took a lot of time over almost four years, was this all people volunteering their time? Was anyone paid?

A: It was a volunteer committee. We had a facilitator that helped get things started and we had staff provided by the county, and they were paid, but the committee members were not paid.

Q: While you were on the committee, what was the most important thing for you to see accomplished and why?

A: It was really important that the process be healing for the community. I really wanted to make sure it didn’t end up being an adversarial process that actually caused harm. I wanted people to know they had a voice in the process and that they felt validated because, usually, that’s not how it goes. Usually, it’s just a few key select people who have a voice in the process.

We knew not everyone was going to have their first pick be the winning memorial but if we could at least give them some validation and a way that they knew that they were heard, then that was okay with me.

Q: How did you do that? What was a way that you gave people who voiced their opinions validation?

A: I think in the designs you really do see the different perspectives and the different voices come through. Everyone’s impacted based on how they relate to the incident and each one of them wanted something different out of the memorial. Of course, the families are always central and integral to any memorial, but at the same time, we have 22,000 ticket holders [who attended the concert] that night and an entire community that was devastated, so you have these other experiences that should be represented as well.

When we were building a process we asked: How can we make a process where everyone has some input and you can see them in the ending result? Our process really included a ton of community engagement including even creative submissions. People can do any kind of art and submit it. We required all our final teams to go through all of those and we highly encouraged them to be inspired by them and maybe incorporate some of the ideas. When you look at the memorial designs, every single one of them, I would look at them and all of these phrases would come back and all these different memories from going through this process, I can see all of the different groups represented in every single one of them.

Q: Why do you think the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center became so prominent in the aftermath of the tragedy? How would you say the center manages to remain so prominent in the victims’ lives so many years later?

A: Well, because everyone heals on a different timeline, we started operating off of a national grant that expires at the end of September this year, but we knew that people don’t heal on a grant cycle. We did reach out to other communities that had gone through something similar and we were told that there’s going to be people who come out for the first time maybe five, seven, sometimes 10 years after and they realize that this unresolved trauma is really impacting them negatively in their life and they need help. So we knew it would be important to make sure that we use the resources and funding that we got from the federal grant to build something that was more permanent that could also help other crime survivors in our community because, as you know, there’s no shortage of violence going around right now.

Q: If you don’t mind me asking, can you share how the center raises the funding necessary to operate?

A: Our original grant was called the Antiterrorism and Emergency Assistance Program. It’s administered through the Department of Justice through the Office for Victims of Crime. It’s a mass violence grant that isn’t something you apply for. When an incident happens they reach out to your community if you qualify for it and they work with you on getting it. That runs out at the end of this month. We have been working with our local county and state government for ways to continue funding the center.

We are a multi-agency collaborative so we have our police and emergency management and our Victims of Crime program, they all staff someone here and then we’re getting operational funding from our county and then we’re getting an infusion of capital funding to build a new building so that’s how we’re funding it as well as private donations for the building.

Q: You said in an interview, “We put the healing process before the end product.” What did you mean by that?

A: Our main goal was to lead a healing process. The whole memorial process to us was about healing and while the memorial itself is an important piece to that, if the memorial process isn’t healing then it almost taints the memorial itself. … I can’t imagine going through that and not ending up with a beautiful design, but you can have a beautiful design and have a negative impact on your community and that was something that we were not going to be okay with.

Q: Is there anything else you want to express that we haven’t touched upon?

A: I think it’s really important for government entities and agencies in our community to understand that memorials really are important. They create a space for the remembrance of so many different people that are impacted by [these kinds of tragedies] and it’s really important to give them a voice in the process.