Men re-painted the walls of the gurdwara and cleaned its carpets, while women gathered again in the kitchen to prepare the communal meal.
Six days after a bloody tragedy shook Sikhs in Oak Creek, the gurdwara where Wade Michael Page had unleashed his hatred, opened its gates again to the public.
Over 100 members of the community returned to clean the place of worship ahead of the funeral service for the victims.
The local police handed over the Oak Creek gurdwara to its management which immediately started the cleaning of the entire premises yesterday.
“It is now open for the public,” Jagajit Singh Sandhu, member of the temple committee, told PTI.
“We expect the cleaning to be over soon, but it is open for the public now,” Singh said.
Amardeep Kaleka, whose father Satwant Singh, was one of the six persons killed by the ex-Army veteran Page, said blood stains and bullet marks from the massacre inside the temple were still visible as people entered the gurudwara yesterday.
“I’m going to get graphic here. The blood was still there, the bullet holes were still there, the spirit was still there — haunted,” Kaleka said in a report in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel.
Kaleka said a more positive feel emanated from the temple after it was cleaned.
Page was wounded when a police officer shot him in the stomach but the FBI said he subsequently died from a self-inflicted gun shot wound to the head.
Three people, including a police officer, were critically injured in the shooting. Four of the six dead in the rampage were Indian nationals.
The temple management has announced that it would hold “wake and visitation” at a city high school, which is expected to be attended by thousands of people, including Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal.