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Second meeting on preserving Tops memorial items happening Wednesday night

Almost five months after the mass shooting at Tops, the public is weighing in on the future of the items honoring the victims outside the grocery store.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Wednesday night is the second time you'll be able to be part of the conversation about the future of the makeshift memorials outside of the Tops on Jefferson Avenue. 

With winter coming, the Buffalo History Museum and the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library are asking the community if and how they should be preserved. 

People have left handmade signs, flowers, photos of victims, balloons, and candles outside of the grocery store in honor of the ten lives lost in the mass shooting, almost five months ago. 

Tuesday night, the Buffalo History Museum and the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library held the first of two scheduled meetings to discuss the best way to go about this preservation process. They met with the community at the Frank E. Merriweather Library on Jefferson Avenue. 

Dr. Eva Doyle, a retired Buffalo Public School teacher, said although it's hard to re-live the tragedy, it's important to document history for future generations. 

"I'm a historian," she said. "I've been writing history for more than forty years. People have a tendency to forget what happened, and they go on with their present-day lives, but history has a tendency to repeat itself. We don't want that to be repeated." 

Buffalo History Museum Executive Director Melissa Brown says there is no planned exhibit at this time. 

"One of the things that people know about museums the most is the idea of exhibits, but there's a whole other side of the work, particularly with collecting organizations that is safekeeping the collections," she said. "For us, the first step always is safekeeping and ensuring that the evidence is there to share a story and what that story might look like six months from now, six years from now, or sixty years from now," she said. "We just have to make sure that the evidence is there for it."

Wednesday's Zoom meeting beings at 6:00 p.m. Click here for the link to join. You can also take a survey by clicking here. 

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