Husband's message from Giffords' bedside: 'she's a fighter'

TUCSON, Ariz. -- Mark Kelly, the husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, spoke publicly for the first time Sunday, leaving his wife's hospital bedside to take the stage at a memorial service for Gabriel Zimmerman, an aide who was killed in the shooting rampage that left Giffords grievously wounded.

Kelly told the several hundred mourners gathered in the courtyard at the Tucson Museum of Art that he had just come from the hospital and that his wife was "improving a little bit each day. She's a fighter."

"I know someday she'll get to tell you how she felt about Gabe herself," Kelly said.

His wife loved Zimmerman "like a younger brother," he said, and was inspired by "his idealism, his strength and his warmth."

At almost the exact same time, about a half-hour's drive east, another shooting victim -- Dorwan Stoddard, 76, known as "Dory" to friends -- was eulogized at a church filled with hundreds of mourners.

"There are no monuments to Dory, there are no streets named after him," said the Rev. Mike Nowak, his pastor. "He was just an ordinary man. He did not become a hero that day -- he was a hero every day of his life."

At University Medical Center, officials said Sunday that Giffords' condition was upgraded to serious from critical because she was no longer on a ventilator. Doctors announced Saturday that they placed a tracheotomy tube in Giffords' throat as a precautionary measure.

to do well," a spokeswoman said in a statement. "She is breathing on her own. Yesterday's procedures were successful and uneventful."

The accused gunman, Jared Loughner, is in the custody of federal marshals at the medium-security Federal Correctional Institution in Phoenix, which houses almost 1,100 prisoners about 25 miles north of downtown Phoenix. According to an official familiar with the prison, Loughner, who federal records say is registered as inmate No. 15213-196, is being held in "segregation" for his own protection. Prisoners in segregation are closely monitored, the official said, and generally spend 23 hours of the day alone in their cell, and have an hour or so a day for exercise and showering. Loughner, 22, has no contact with other prisoners, said the official.

The funerals Sunday marked the fourth and fifth for victims of the tragedy, leaving just one remaining, that of Dorothy Morris, 76, whose husband, George, remains hospitalized after the shooting. The date has not yet been set, said Bill Royle, a family friend, because it depends in part on Morris' recovery from his wounds.

Despite the tears, it seemed on this cool, sunny day that this reeling community had finally begun to slip back into a semblance of its former rhythms as the horde of news media that descended upon the city finally began to pack up and leave.

Grocery carts trundled through the aisles at the Safeway where the shooting occurred, though shoppers continued to pause and reflect in front of a makeshift memorial outside.