January 28, 2011
By Pat McCaughan

Dorothy Morris will live on in the hearts of those she loved, the Rev. Cliff Blinman told mourners Jan. 26 at St. Philip in the Hills Episcopal Church in Tucson, Arizona.

Morris, the last of the Tucson shooting victims to be laid to rest, was much beloved by her family and friends and especially by her husband of 54 years, George Morris, a retired United Airlines pilot, Blinman said.

Morris attempted to shield his wife Jan. 8 when Jared Lee Loughner opened fire at a Tucson Safeway store where U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Arizona) was holding an open meeting. Nineteen people were wounded, including six fatally.

"But it was too late" to save Dorothy, Blinman added. Morris was wounded in the leg and chest and was hospitalized for two weeks. He was released from a rehabilitation facility Jan. 25, Blinman said.

"No woman was loved more than she was loved by him. They did everything together," recalled Blinman, the Morrises' next-door neighbor, during a Jan. 27 telephone interview from his Oro Valley, Arizona home.

He said that after the couple met at a high school dance Dorothy, a quiet person, surprised Morris by asking him to call her. They married May 11, 1956 at Trinity Episcopal Church in Reno, Nevada. The couple had two daughters and three grandchildren. She was 76.

"It was so sudden and so tragic. I can't fathom what that's like," said Blinman, adding that if there any lesson is to be learned from the tragedy, it is to stay focused on love. "You never know when something is going to happen. We only have this moment in time. If you love somebody, you need to tell them you love them. Don't wait," he said.

"The whole community has been trying to heal … and it's beginning to happen. I go by that Safeway store, it's about ten miles from where we live, and it gives you a strange feeling."

Healing has begun but will take a very long time for the family of yet another shooting victim, said the Rev. John Matthew, great-uncle of Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, Giffords' community outreach director.

"Gabe really cared about people," he said. "His office staff called him the constituent whisperer – like the horse whisperer. Gabe had that ability to calm people and be helpful to constituents and he was shot by a young man who could have used his help if he'd had the opportunity to do that."

Zimmerman a Tucson native, was engaged to be married. He died at the scene, Matthew said.

"Judy and I were at a luncheon at St. Michael's Cathedral in Boise the day of the shooting," when he received word that Giffords was the assassin's target, Matthew recalled.

"I knew immediately that Gabe was in danger," he recalled in a Jan. 27 telephone interview from Tucson. "My sister Rachel (Gabe's grandmother) called back a while later telling me he had been killed immediately."

Matthew and his spouse, the Rev. Judy McKay, are retired priests in the Episcopal Diocese of Idaho. McKay eulogized Zimmerman "as a man of justice" at a Jan. 16 memorial service at the Tucson Museum of Art in downtown Tucson, attended by more than 700.

"His concern was that all would have what they needed in this life," she told mourners during her remarks. "His concern was for anyone who struggled and he was good at finding solutions and connecting people with helpful organization and resources. Most of all he worked to change systems that deprive people of the wholeness of life they deserve."

She encouraged those in attendance to remember Zimmerman "by living lives of justice: (by) treating people fairly, appreciating the situations in which they find themselves, and working to remove the systemic ills that deny the wholeness of life to people."

Several scholarships have been established in his memory, including the Gabe Zimmerman Spirit of Service Award at the Arizona State University School of Social Work and another at the University of California, Santa Cruz, which will be used to support undergraduate students who are passionate about social issues and committed to public service in the Division of Social Sciences, Matthew said.

"The family's doing amazingly well … getting back to life again," he said. "I didn't hear the family say anything negative about the person with the gun." There was concern about the availability of guns without adequate background checks, he added.

Giffords, who was shot point blank in the head, was released from a Houston hospital Jan. 26 and moved to a rehabilitation institute. She is expected to recover. Immediately after the shootings, authorities and the media questioned if the harsh political rhetoric had contributed to the attack.

"We don't think there was any direct connection you could track between today's political rhetoric and that shooting," Matthew said. "Yet, our family is quite concerned about the extent of political rhetoric that demonizes people or diminishes people" or doesn't take them seriously."

That tone had already inspired one Colorado Episcopal church to call for prayer for greater cooperation and goodwill among the nation's leaders.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Central City, in the Diocese of Colorado, a small congregation with twelve members, brought its Rocky Mountain community together pray Jan. 26 for political peace, said the Rev. Sarah Freeman, vicar.

Plans for the vigil began last fall but the Tucson shootings "were just one more example of how divided the country is. We've become such angry, hostile people," Freeman said during a Jan. 27 telephone interview from Central City.

Local Catholic, Methodist and the Evangelical Free Church were represented at the service, attended by about 30. Four Central City politicians also attended. Prayers were offered for city, county, state and national officials.

Thirteen other small churches throughout the Colorado diocese, and a Buddhist congregation also prayed simultaneously in support of their efforts, she said.

"We asked the officials who were present to come forward and allow us to pray for them. Their response was really wonderful. They came forward and joined hands and said, ‘Pray for us all together because we're going to work together,'" she recalled.

"It is an example of different backgrounds, different political profiles, coming together and saying we will put this stuff aside and work together."

Freeman said the congregation wanted to bring the community together, "to stand up and say this is what we believe and what we expect of leaders of government, to make choices that reflect who we are."

The response was "eye-opening," she said. "It felt like I saw people changed."

Episcopal News Service
The Rev. Pat McCaughan is a national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service. She is based in Los Angeles.