Julie and Michael Mammone, a couple who many said had a once-in-a-lifetime love affair, had their plans laid out.
“We were so happy with our lives in Laguna,” a tearful Julie Mammone said. “We’d launched our beautiful sons and were going to spend our 30th wedding anniversary in Italy. We had sailing lessons in April and scuba trips planned.
“It was all so tragically taken from us on Feb. 1,” she said, but added that her husband’s memory “will live on in all of us.
“I love you with all my heart,” she said. “Rest in peace until we meet again.”
Julie Mammone, who began her tribute with Kahlil Gibran’s poem “The Beauty of Death,” was the last to speak during a nearly two-hour celebration of life held Thursday, Feb. 16, for Dr. Michael Mammone, an emergency-room physician who had spent his life in service to others, first as a lifeguard on beaches in Los Angeles County and then in emergency rooms across Southern California.
Mammone, 58, died Feb. 1 after being struck while riding his mountain bike along Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point and then being stabbed by the driver. Vanroy Evan Smith of Long Beach, who was detained by bystanders, has been charged with murder; he pleaded not guilty but now a mental competency hearing has been scheduled for Feb. 22.
Thursday’s public memorial hosted at the Festival of Arts grounds in Laguna Beach stayed focused on Mammone’s life as family members and close friends shared stories and told of how Mammone had uniquely touched each of their lives. It was attended by several hundred people, including many from the medical field and first responders with whom Mammone worked for more than three decades.
Speakers also included doctors who went to medical school with Mammone at USC, colleagues from hospitals where he worked, including San Antonio Regional Hospital in Upland and Providence Mission Hospitals in Mission Viejo and Laguna Beach, and representatives from the Rancho Cucamonga Fire…
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