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Female Speaker: Bridge Rail Foundation was created in 2005, it's purpose and intent is
to stop the suicides on the bridge by changing the railing or getting the net under.
Male Speaker: We felt that it would be useful to the cause to have a broader-based nonprofit
volunteer effort to put a suicide deterrent system on that bridge.
Molly Roberts: It's not just the people who are dying, it's all those people who watched
it. It's worthwhile to do this to preserve life for the people who are jumping but it's
worthwhile also to preserve the emotional life of the people who are also involved in
this, the families as well, if it stops one suicide, it's one human life, it's worth it.
Dave Hull: It's an absolutely beautiful structure and an actually gorgeous setting. It's just
perfect, it cannot be denied, but what can equally not be denied is that it's deadly.
The deadly part we can fix, the beautiful part we endorse, we want more.
Dana Barks: It just has the power, you stand on the bridge and it vibrates with such a
frequency of traffic and the energy being transported back and forth between the landmasses
that you feel that energy and you understand why people are drawn there to take their lives.
Dayna Whitmer: Well, opposition to anywhere you are on the bridge is aesthetics, the safety
of the bridge, so they had to do wind tunnel studies to find out what designs would be
safe to put on the bridge so it wouldn't be structurally impaired.
Mark Whitmer: Yeah.
Dayna Whitmer: And it was safety for the workers.
Mark Whitmer: Yes.
Dayna Whitmer: I mean, if they put up a higher railing the workers would have to use more
tiles, it would take longer time to do routine repairs.
Dave Hull: Part of the argument is the free will argument, why should we spend money to
abridge someone's free.
Dayna Whitmer: Then it goes back to the issue of suicide and the stigma is I'm not going
to spend money on these people. They want to die, I'm going to want to stop them from
dying, it's their choice. Well, that's not really a choice. Then that's how they make
it sound, you know, they want to kill themselves, go ahead. But they really don't want to kill
themselves, they just want to feel better.
Molly Roberts: For some people maybe their last sense of control over something in their
life. And so part of the work of working with someone who is suicidal is to open up those
choices, so that they don't feel like that's the only one they have available to make.
Dayna Whitmer: Over the 75 years as all the other methods of suicide decreased in San
Francisco, there is only one method that continues to increase every decade, and that is jumping
off the Golden Gate Bridge.
Dave Hull: The first important piece of evidence in the public realm regarding the Golden Gate
Bridge and suicides was Dr. Richard Seiden's article, in which he and his class followed
500 people who had been prevented from jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge for a period of
26 years, and he found that 94% of those who had been prevented from taking their lives
lived out a normal lifespan or died of natural causes; 6% did go on and killed themselves.
I mean, many people say, oh they'd just go somewhere else and kill themselves, that's
part of the old understanding of suicide. Yes, some people do go on and kill themselves
but it's a distinct minority, 6%, a great majority of people who were prevented from
taking their lives do not subsequently kill themselves.
Dayna Whitmer: We don't talk that much about mental illness and brain diseases, and we
don't talk about suicide and how to stop it, how easy it is to stop it, and the biggest
way to stop is give people time. And that's why you want a net or a barrier on the bridge
to get people that time.
Dana Barks: On the day that Donovan died, it was a really nice February day. Candy got
home, and I couldn't even meet her at the door, I waited till she came around into office,
and she looked at me and she knew. And I just told her, he was gone. And I have never heard
in my life the wailing, the sound of her pain, it was chilling, it broke my heart even more.
It was like I've never heard pain like that. There was nothing I could do, and we couldn't
comfort each other. We didn't want anything to do with each other.
Dayna Whitmer: The trauma of suicide that it leaves behind on the families, we were
recently contacted by the family of the 500th victim, and even after 40 years they are still
suffering and they still missed their brother. It's never ending, and it needs to end and
it won't end if we don't talk it.
Molly Roberts: There is a taboo for suicide and that's historical. If you say I had somebody
committed suicide, the room goes silent.
Matt Answering Machine: Hey, it's Matt. I'm now doing class, at work, or I'm at learning,
so if you just leave your message, I'll get back to you.
Dayna Whitmer: Matthew was fun, vivacious, witty, very energetic, but he got diagnosed
early with schizoaffective disorder, which is schizophrenia with a mood disorder at the
age of 12 following his first suicide attempt.
Mark Whitmer: You wouldn't have known from the outside, he is going to school, he is
working, he is looking forward to the future, why would you've done anything.
Dayna Whitmer: Yeah.
Dave Hull: Kathy was 26. She was a junior at UC, Santa Cruz, and she was doing well,
she was getting A's and B's. She was a lovely young woman and she was smart. She also had
a long history of depression, so she had a bad week apparently, and paid her rent at
the apartment for six months. She paid her car insurance for six months, she filled up
the tank and she drove for the Golden Gate Bridge, and she jumped.
Molly Roberts: When you've gone through something like this, it feels like you are the only
one who has ever gone through it, and having a group of people who really understand all
the gamut of emotions if you're going to go through, there is peace and solace.
Female Speaker: Dana Barks ceremonies let you go somewhere where you can actually just
let down all your barriers.
Female Speaker: You are around people who understand the depth of your grief and the
isolation you've been in, they are a new family that you have such shared experiences with,
and you can relate to them on such a different level.
Dana Barks: We are gathering at the place near the water where our children or loved
ones took their lives.
Dave Hull: Dana is a fire artist at Burning Man, and I had that pleasure myself of helping
him build some of those bridges and seeing them burn, which is a kind of, the idea of
seeing the Golden Gate Bridge is a hyperbolic solution to the problem, let's just get rid
of the Golden Gate Bridge, which of course is not feasible nor desirable or possible
in any way, shape or form.
Dana Barks: That's what the ceremony is about, they are about us getting together and being
able to say whatever we want about this loss without anybody looking at us like in some
kind of way.
Dayna Whitmer: When the net goes up, there will be a universal sigh of relief that people
will not die at this site anymore. And I know a lot of the families have invested emotionally
in this, but it would be a nice closure for everybody involved. We'd be very glad to see
the end of this.
Male Speaker: Until that barrier is built there will be every 10 days on 40 year average
another family, another circle of friends and acquaintances that are shocked.
Male Speaker: The pain will always be there. It could always go back to back, but there
comes a time when you have to allow yourself to live fully again.