Kirkland vigil held to mourn France attack victims

KIRKLAND, Wash. — It is still difficult for Valerie Muzzolini Gordon to talk about the devastating attack on Bastille Day in her native Nice, France.

“It’s a tragic thing no matter how you look at it,” she said, wiping away tears.

Even knowing that her family and friends are safe, hasn’t dulled the pain for Muzzolini Gordon, the principal harpist of the Seattle Symphony.

“It was a rough day on Thursday,” she said, her voice cracking. “I think it will be good to be there.”

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That emotion is familiar to those gathered Saturday at the Kirkland Marina Park, a handful of the estimated 7,000 French nationals living in the Puget Sound region.

“You can’t be there, so at least we try to be together here,” Olivier Fontana, of UEF Seattle, said.

Fontana has organized three vigils in just 18 months for the victims of terrorist attacks in his native France. Still, no one, it seems, expected the attack on Nice.

“I was obviously surprised,” he said. “I was obviously shocked. But you know in the back of my mind, I knew that, as everybody says here, back in France, we’re at war. And something was going to happen one day, somewhere.”

Now that that somewhere is where Muzzolini Gordon grew up, she says, “I just want to be there and just see how everybody is, just kind of share the healing process. Which is probably going to take a few weeks, a few months, a few years. I don’t know if you’re ever going to recover from this.”

In fact, she is going ahead with a trip she planned before the attack — she will be back in Nice next week.