6 options for permanent Parkland memorial
A panel that will choose a monument to the 17 who died in Parkland hopes one of six final proposals creates a place for peace after six years of sorrow.
A location has been selected: a 1-acre site on the border of Parkland and Coral Springs at the former Heron Bay Golf Club.
The land, which will house a permanent memorial to the students and teachers killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, was donated by the North Springs Improvement District, which provides water treatment and stormwater management in northwest Broward County.
The six proposals were posted last week on the Parkland 17 Memorial Foundation website.
Some recommend an enclosed space; others offer structures that are open to the elements. Several are circular; some have reflecting pools. One is in the shape of a heart; another resembles a tear.
All will present the 14 students and three school staff members who died Feb. 14, 2018, as the people they were, without referencing events that have happened since, said Tony Montalto, vice chair of the foundation. His daughter Gina was 14 when she was killed at Stoneman Douglas in the massacre, one of the worst in U.S. history.
The shooter, a former Stoneman Douglas student, opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, killing the 17 and wounding 17 others.
“The memorial will honor who the victims were before the tragedy,” Montalto said. “When you think of the teachers and coaches who died, all gave of themselves to the community.
“That should be remembered. They were bright shining lights.”
Efforts to memorialize this catastrophe have come in spontaneous and sporadic waves over the past six years.
At the first prom after the shooting, organizers created a tribute near the entrance to the ballroom with pictures of the deceased that were surrounded by couches and designed as a space to sit and think, a quiet place apart from the ballroom’s musical clamor.
Parkland’s Pine Trails Park also has become a place where the community goes to grieve. Hundreds visit on Feb. 14 each
year, strolling through rows of black-and-white portraits of the 17 victims.
While emotional ceremonies honor the dead each year on Feb. 14, organizers of the Parkland 17 Memorial hope to create a permanent gathering place for mourning
and healing. The panel began seeking proposals in January 2023 for spaces that need only moderate maintenance in Florida’s heat and include a place to sit, as well as landscaping, pedestrian access and a tribute to each victim.
The artists were invited to “be
a part of our collective healing process by extending compassion and empathy along with their creative designs,” according to the call for proposals.
As per the instructions to the artists, the student activism that followed the shooting and anger
about the trial of the shooter should not have a place at the monument.
The panel also requested that the proposals not include references to guns, literal depictions of the victims, religious or political statements or anything else that’s happened since the tragedy.