Wednesday, March 7, 2007

USF Community Left Reeling by Fatal Accident


The USF community was left reeling after last Thursday's accident which took the life of Paula Gmelch, whose husband, Walter, is the Dean of the School of Education at USF.

As is often the case at the site of a fatal accident, mourners have erected a makeshift memorial as an outlet for their grief. At the corner of Turk and Chabot where Gmelch was unfortunately standing when according to multiple sources, a Cadillac Escalade made a u-turn forcing a Nissan Pathfinder off the road into two pedestrians, the other identified here by one resourceful reporter as Yansen Setiawan.

The memorial contains a wall of messages which range from ee cummings to offerings of thoughts and prayers to a note from Gmelch's nieces. Also included are a benediction, a photo of Paula and Walter Gmelch and no less than two dozen floral arrangements. All of which reflect the profound loss endured by this community in the past week.

6 comments:

Michael Vick said...

Great pictures of the memorial. I especially like the close-up of the wall with all the messages.

Christina Kho said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
eerickson said...

its interesting that the quote by ee cummings caught your attention, it grabbed mine as well when i walked by

SKBlackburn said...

Great post, and your pictures of the memorial really capture what a great person Paula Gmelch was and how many people really cared about her!

Phoenix Personal Injury said...

How moving. My condolences to Paula's family. May her good soul rest in peace.

Andi said...

My thoughts and prayers go out to Paula's family. This unfortunate incident is breaking my heart. I believe it would help if families could grieve together for the loss of their loved ones. I thought I'd share www.deathletters.org as well for grieving families. It gets easier when you talk with someone else who is going through the same ordeal.