Ten years after tragedy, families of Jewish Community Center shooting victims continue to heal
By Andy Alcock
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OVERLAND PARK, Kansas (KMBC) — Ten years after an anti-Semitic gunman took the lives of three people at Overland Park’s Jewish Community Center campus, the victims’ family members are forging ahead with messages of love and kindness.
Mindy Corporon lost both her son and father in that 2014 shooting.
She’s featured in a new documentary called “Healing Hate”.
Corporon, a co-founder of the group “SevenDays”, is focusing her attention in part on spreading her message of love and kindness to area youth.
“They are going to be the ones who are going to make the changes that they want to see made,” she said.
Jim Lamanno lost his wife Terri at Village Shalom two days before the couple’s 25th wedding anniversary.
“The last ten years there’s been good and bad. I have my children, which I’m very happy that I was able to take care of them the first two years after it happened,” Lamanno said. “I don’t really have a lot of recollection of the years 2014 and 2015. I was kind of in a daze. I was very lucky in that I had good counseling sessions, a good psychologist that really helped me, you know, see the way,” he added.
Ten years later, Jim and Terri’s son became engaged to be married Tuesday.
“She would love to be here planning this wedding,” Jim said about Terri.
Mindy Corporon was front and center at a breakfast Wednesday morning.
It’s part of the annual Seven Days activities schedule.
“The decade mark feels like it was yesterday, and it feels like it’s been forever. It’s a very interesting, surreal feeling,” she said. “I remember someone saying about three or four months after the murders, I can’t wait to see what you do in ten years. And I thought, I don’t want to live for ten years. That’s how painful it was,” Corporon added.
The documentary “Healing Hate” focuses on Mindy’s friendship forged in tragedy with Sunayana Dumala.
She lost her husband to a hate crime in Olathe in 2017.
The documentary airs on Kansas City PBS Thursday night at 7.
A “Kindness Festival” featuring music, family fun, and food trucks will be held at the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park Sunday from 4:30 to 7 p.m.
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