Judge Denies Bid to Stop Jonestown Memorial

Bay City News

A judge today denied a bid for a temporary restraining order that would have halted further work on a memorial at an Oakland cemetery to commemorate the 918 victims of the mass suicide at Jonestown in Guyana in 1978.

However, Alameda County Superior Court Judge Robert McGuiness said he will have another hearing on the legal dispute over the memorial on May 25, four days before a dedication ceremony is to be held at the Evergreen Cemetery at 6450 Camden Ave.

At that time, he will consider whether he should grant a preliminary injunction as well as whether he should allow the matter to proceed to a full hearing on the merits of the case.

The memorial, which is comprised of four granite plaques and cost$45,000, was installed on Monday.

The victims of the mass suicide on Nov. 18, 1978, were members of the Peoples Temple, which was headed by the Rev. Jones. The temple was headquartered in San Francisco but later moved to Guyana.

Of the 918 people who died, 409 are buried at the Evergreen Cemetery at 6450 Camden Ave., where memorial services are conducted every year on the mass suicide's anniversary.

The Rev. Jynona Norwood, the senior pastor of the Family Christian Cathedral in Inglewood, who lost 27 family members, including her mother, in the mass suicide, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday against the cemetery, alleging that it had reneged on a commitment to have her install a memorial there.

But Evergreen executive director Ron Haulman said the cemetery "was caught in the middle for so long between many groups," including a group run by Norwood, who said they wanted to install a memorial but never were able to raise enough money to finish the project.

Haulman said when a new group called the Jonestown Memorial Fund, which includes Jim Jones Jr. of Pacifica, the son of the Rev. Jones, came forward recently and said it would raise sufficient funds to pay for a memorial the cemetery agreed and allowed the work to go forward.

In his brief ruling, McGuiness said he is "mindful of the subject matter involved" and of "its effect on the lives and families involved, its place in local and national history and its sensitive nature."

Haulman said he thinks McGuiness' ruling was logical because the memorial is already in place, making it too late to stop it.

After McGuiness held a short hearing on the matter earlier today, Norwood's lawyer, Vernon Goins, said Norwood's ultimate goal is to have the memorial removed and she also wants to prevent the dedication ceremony from being held as planned on May 29.

The most controversial aspect of the memorial is that it includes the name of the Rev. Jones.

The group that raised funds for the memorial said it does not glamorize Jones because the names are listed alphabetically and there are other victims named Jones.

John Cobb, a member of the Jonestown Memorial Fund who lost 10 family members, including his mother, in the mass suicide, said he believes Jones's name should be included in the memorial because "it's part of history."

Cobb said, "It's what happened. It's the truth, and you can't deny the truth."

But Norwood said the inclusion of Jones's name "desecrates the memory of the victims."

She said having Jones's name "honors an Osama bin Laden and an Adolf Hitler, which he is."