EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio — Before her shift at McDonald's, Cathy Thomas makes her regular visit to a decaying building.
The sidewalk out front crumbles under her feet. The two-story building, stuck between a liquor store and a weed-choked church, sags from neglect. Shards of glass frame the back upstairs windows, revealing rooms with burnt floral wallpaper and rusted pipes. Most of the first floor has been covered in whitewashed plywood.
The empty structure once was home to vandals and drug dealers. Now it offers solace to Thomas, whose daughter's name -- Janette L. Willis -- is written on the front of the building in 3-inch-high black letters.
Willis is among about 1,000 children and young adults who have died violently in Cuyahoga County since 1990 and whose names have been posted across the building's exterior.
The bereaved call this the Wall of Sorrows, a gathering place for mothers and fathers, aunts and cousins, school pals and other loved ones of the dead. When community activists first came here about three years ago, they had the names printed onto vinyl sheets that they nailed to the plywood.
Then, Thomas and hundreds of others came to leave their handwritten marks on the plywood boards. Over time, the names, along with messages of longing and hope, have covered nearly all of the building's first floor -- about half a block long and more than a story high.
Today the building, on Euclid Avenue less than a mile from City Hall and police headquarters, is considered by many to be hallowed ground.
"The soldiers have their Vietnam wall," said Thomas, 45, who added her daughter's name in 2002. "The Jews have their Wailing Wall. This is ours."
But the wall may not be around much longer. Last month, the council voted to tear down the building as part of an effort to raze condemned properties and sell the land to developers. City officials believe an empty lot will help the community far more than a wall of names. A demolition date has not been set.
Thomas and others like her, members of a group called Survivors/Victims of Tragedy Inc., are petitioning to hold a vote to rescind the City Council's decision. They said they had gathered several hundred signatures.
"We've just started," said Judy Martin, whose 23-year-old son was fatally shot by a carjacker in 1994. "We're not going away. If we have to chain ourselves to the wall, we will."
