By Dave Dahl

SPRINGFIELD– The speakers at an interfaith vigil outside the state Capitol Thursday faced a colorful sea of umbrellas, as the rain could not keep away a couple of hundred who wanted to defy the hatred shown by the Pittsburgh synagogue gunman five days earlier.

“We are one world, one country, one state, and one city,” said Springfield mayor Jim Langfelder. “I stand here as a proud grandson of my Jewish grandfather, who escaped persecution, and, by the blessings of God, made it safely to America.”

Pat Chesley, president of the Jewish Federation of Springfield, said Jews are not alone.

“Others have suffered,” he said. “Recently, in Louisville, two African-Americans were gunned down (at a grocery store) because the white supremacists there couldn’t get into a black church there and kill more people.”

Rev. Blythe Kieffer, a Springfield Presbyterian pastor, quoted the second inaugural address of President Lincoln, whose statue stood over the vigil. “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” she said, “let us bind up the nation’s wounds and do all which
may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and all nations.”