LEWISTON, Maine — At 6:56 p.m. Friday, the crowd gathered in the Colisée recreational facility went silent, holding candles aloft for two long minutes. At 7:08 p.m., the hundreds assembled did so again, some bowing their heads in memory and grief.
The first pause was exactly a year removed from the minute the worst mass shooting in Maine’s history began at the Just-In-Time Recreation bowling alley. The latter corresponded with the time when the gunman continued his rampage at Schemengees Bar & Grille on the other side of this small city.
The evening ceremony observed the tragedy, which left 18 dead, 13 wounded, and a city bereft. Survivors sat together in the Colisée, united in tears and prayers. A still-aching community paused to remember those taken too soon.
“Here, tonight, there is light,” said master of ceremonies Tom Caron, a well-known NESN sports broadcaster who is from Lewiston. “We have come together to help each other lift the burden of sorrow, opening our hearts to one another and sharing in grief — and in hope.”
The event focused on memories of those killed by Robert R. Card II, an Army Reservist who for months had been descending into paranoid delusions before heading to Just-In-Time Recreation with a gun.
Eighteen small brown chairs lined the front of the stage, facing the crowd, each empty but for a small cluster of white flowers and a candle. On the back of each chair, a large blue-and-white heart held the name of a person killed in the attack.
Danielle Parent, director of the Maine Resiliency Center, read the names of those who had died, pausing between each one as their photo showed, larger than life, on screens around the arena: Tricia Asselin, William Brackett, Peyton Brewer-Ross, Thomas Conrad, Michael Deslauriers II, Maxx Hathaway, Bryan MacFarlane, Keith Macneir, Ronald Morin, Joshua Seal, Arthur Strout, Robert Violette, Lucille Violette, Stephen Vozzella, Jason Walker, Joseph Walker, and Aaron and William Young.
Liz Seal, the wife of Josh Seal, a member of the deaf community who worked as an ESL interpreter, said those affected by the shooting came together to support each other.
“These connections have formed a spiderweb of a beautiful community that will ever be ‘Lewiston strong,’” she signed, with a translator reading her statement aloud at the event. “I’m proud to be a part of it. I love you all.”
The arena was awash in blue and white, the colors of Lewiston High School that have been adopted citywide as part of the “Lewiston Strong” memorials that have been visible around town over the past year. Floral arrangements in those colors adorned the stage, and many in the crowd wore blue “Lewiston Strong” sweat shirts. Small, electric candles illuminated somber, pensive faces.
The shooting and the two-day manhunt that followed cut deep into the heart of Lewiston. Survivors continue to struggle to cope with the horror they witnessed. Card was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound about 48 hours after the shooting.
Last year, Oct. 25 was a Wednesday. That meant Schemengees was hosting a cornhole league for the deaf community. Over at Just-In-Time Recreation, it was practice night for a youth bowling league.
Card killed people involved with both leagues, tearing at the fabric of groups that feel like a throwback to a more civically minded time. But those communities have rallied; within days of the shooting, survivors at the Maine Resiliency Center were asking about getting some cornhole boards, and many of the survivors still like to play together.
And the youth bowling league still practices on Wednesdays at Just-In-Time. During a practice earlier this month, kids seemed happy, bowling, dancing, and chatting. But a closer look shows slogans like “Lewiston Strong” on a parent’s clothing, and, high up on a couple of the walls, a blue circle around the names of those killed.
The bowling alley reopened in May, though it was closed on Friday. Justin Juray, who owns it with his wife, Sam, has said they wanted to spend a quiet day with family and friends. Schemengees has not reopened.
At Friday’s ceremony, no one mentioned Card’s name. Many of the headlines have focused on the shooter amid questions over whether he could have been stopped. A report from an independent commission appointed by Governor Janet Mills found multiple failures by law enforcement during the months that Card had been openly talking about his paranoid delusions and making threats. Warnings came from his family, and then from fellow reservists, of his escalating behavior, and though Card was taken to a hospital three months before the shooting, a hearing to hold him involuntarily was scuttled and he was released, the commission found.
About six weeks before the shooting came another inflection point: Sheriffs’ deputies alerted to his threats and his access to weapons arrived at his trailer in Bowdoin, but stood down after he wouldn’t answer the door. Rather than trying to invoke the state’s “yellow flag” law meant to remove the guns from a dangerous person, they left after his family agreed to take away his firearms. But Card had a legally purchased high-powered rifle the night of the shootings at the bowling alley and bar.
A group of 100 survivors and families of victims have signaled their intent to sue the Army, the Defense Department, and a New York military hospital, alleging that officials had been negligent.
The shooting led Mills, a longtime gun-rights supporter, to sign a bill that expanded background checks on gun purchases and tightened the yellow-flag law in a way narrowly tailored to the circumstances involving Card. This was a significant change in Maine, a rural state where hunting is popular and many people grow up comfortable around firearms, and was cheered by some as the first significant tightening of gun laws in recent memory. Others, though, wished that the changes had gone further to include universal background checks and a ban on high-powered rifles like the one Card used.
But Friday night wasn’t about politics or policy, matters of law or of flaws in the system. People smiled as they greeted friends and wept as photos of their loved ones lingered on the screen.
Joanna Stokinger, lead advocate at the Maine Resiliency Center, said she’s watched people heal , leaning on new friends they never would have known otherwise.
“This beautiful tapestry of our community will not unravel and float away,” she said. “We will still be a beautiful sight. We just might look and feel a little different — and that’s OK.”
Now comes an important question, said Shanna Cox of the Lewiston Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce: “What does moving forward look like? How after such loss, can it even be possible?”
“Resilience is not a one-time achievement,” she said. “It’s a process — a journey that we will walk together every day.”
There’s no instruction manual to cope with grief or trauma, said the Rev. Sarah Gillespie, other than to be gentle with one another and with ourselves, however your grieving process goes.
“You are not behind or ahead of others,” she said. “You are just here, and that is what matters.”
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.