This story was published Monday, July 28th, 2003
The vandals who hit Howard Amon Park and Christ the King Church last week were a blight on an otherwise enjoyable weekend in the Tri-Cities.
The offenders struck late Thursday or early Friday, leaving behind ethnic, racial and religious slurs in black spraypaint on buildings, asphalt, a dock and the park's fingernail stage.
Such vandalism of a church and public spaces is vile, but this timing was especially bad given the thousands of people who were in the Tri-Cities this weekend for Water Follies. Perhaps that's why the vandals struck when they did.
Fortunately, Richland city parks crews were able to clean up most of the graffiti in the park before the Allied Arts Sidewalk Show opened Friday.
A Sunday column on this page, written before the vandalism in Richland, talked about what graffiti through the years has said about the human spirit.
The vandalism in Richland spoke of only the worst in humanity.