In Parkland, a ‘bubble of perfection’ is pierced

Until a few days ago, life in Parkland played out under a magical bubble, its residents, who call themselves Parklanders, will tell you.

A new city, a little more than 50 years old, and tucked away in a remote corner of rapidly changing Broward County, Parkland is a step back in time, an all-American small town of fewer than 30,000 residents, with desirable public schools, quiet streets and plentiful parks.

It is a wave-to-a-stranger kind of place, Parklanders will tell you with some pride, where they prefer gentle roundabouts to stop signs and red lights.

It is a place that tries to meld respectfully into the flora on the edge of the Everglades — the city seal is “Parkland, Florida: Environmentally Proud,” and its high school is named for one of the fiercest defenders of the River of Grass.

It is a place where high school football, basketball and soccer are played at a high level, but baseball is still king.

It is a place that produced Anthony Rizzo, the most recent winner of the Roberto Clemente Award, given to the Major League Baseball player who best represents the game through “extraordinary character, community involvement, philanthropy and positive contributions.”

It is a place where people who could live anywhere, like Florida Panthers captain Derek MacKenzie, choose to raise a family.

It is a place routinely listed among the safest cities in the state — a designation residents need no encouragement to share.

It is a place where they honor 17 victims of a massacre with a field of wooden crosses and Stars of David, and the emotional visitor will find at the base of each a thoughtfully placed box of tissues.

City of stability

Sarah MacKenzie and her hockey-playing husband could raise their young children anywhere, including their native Sudbury, Ontario, but the familyfriendly peace and quiet of Parkland was exactly what they were seeking.

“We wanted to bring some normalcy to the children’s life. We jump around from city to city, and we wanted some stability. We knew Parkland would provide that for us,” MacKenzie says, citing its many parks, city-sponsored sports and family events. “The safety factor also appealed to us, which is ironic to say now.”

MacKenzie was speaking at the city’s Pine Trails Park on Friday afternoon, a short bicycle ride from her home, as her daughter, 8, and son, 6, played with their bikes. Nearby, on a field of grass typically dedicated to picnics, concerts and Easter egg hunts, 17 memorials received mourners, who offered flowers, re-lit candles and pulled tissues from boxes.

The park is part of her routine with her kids, but MacKenzie says this trip was designed to show them the reality of what was on TV and how “to be respectful of the situation.”

“I feel like we’ve lost an innocence, in our bubble. When we go out on date nights or something … there’s always a sigh of relief when we come home to Parkland, that calmness, the quiet, the dark, the country and things like that,” she says.

MacKenzie is confident the bubble can be repaired.

“It’s going to take time. But I think, if anything, now we’re just going to appreciate each other that much more,” she says. “We have the option to stay and live in Canada while my husband works here, but we choose to be here because we do feel safe. We’re happy here. And we shouldn’t run away from fear, because then evil wins, and we can’t have that happen.”

A teen’s ‘utopia’

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School sits on Holmberg Road, named for an east-west sharecropper’s trail cut through woods and farmland long before the Sawgrass Expressway existed.

Much of it is a winding, two-lane road, lined by a ribbon of bike trails, but it remains a central thoroughfare for the city, running from the edge of Heron Bay Golf Club, home of the Honda Classic and prestigious Dixie Amateur tournaments, past sprawling equestrian centers and large lots of two-story, Spanish-tiled homes in shades of beige, tan and ecru.

On the west end of Holmberg, at Coral Ridge Drive, is a popular hangout for Douglas students, a Starbucks, where on Friday the clientele was mostly media from around the world. Troye Sivan’s “My Youth” played overhead.

Sara Giovanello, a 17-year-old Douglas High junior and aspiring artist and poet, calls Parkland “utopia.”

“We were in this bubble of perfection. Everything is beautiful here. This shooting was a bullet to the bubble. Everything popped,” she says. “When I’d talk to people who asked where I lived, I’d say ‘Parkland,’ and they’d say, ‘Where’s that?’ Now, I’m going to say, ‘Parkland,’ and they’re going to just say, ‘Oh.’ ”

Giovanello spent part of her Friday at Pine Trails Park, where she left milkweed flowers she picked from her garden at a cross dedicated to her late friend, Helena Ramsay. Her weekend would be devoted to funeral services, she says.

A prolific diarist, Giovanello says she’s been unable to write since she entered four words under the date 2-14-18: “Gunshots. I am broken.”

Since moving to Parkland from Long Island seven years ago, Giovanello has found the small-town charms of the city irresistible. The parade of foodtruck events, pool parties, concerts in the park and other diversions is only possible with investment from the city, volunteers and residents, she says.

For Giovanello, that has meant using the artistic skills learned at Douglas to paint children’s faces at the Parkland Farmers Market.

“Being an active member of the community, to make kids happy, made me feel amazing,” she says.

Giovanello says that while the city’s reputation for safety may have taken a hit, she believes the atmosphere of community remains strong.

“In Parkland, everybody knows everybody, and it’s beautiful,” she says. “The only good thing to come out of this whole situation is the fact that we’re all so unified now.”

The baseball bond

After Wednesday’s shooting, Chicago Cubs star Anthony Rizzo, a 2007 Douglas graduate, left the team’s spring-training facility in Arizona to be at a Thursday night vigil in Pine Trails Park. There, the Roberto Clemente Award winner delivered an emotional address in which he reminded the thousands of mourners that he studied in the same classrooms as the victims.

“I am only who I am because of this community,” he told the crowd.

Baseball has long been an important way for Parkland residents to bond.

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Eagles won a state title in 2016, and were ranked No. 1 in the nation by Baseball America, playing on a field named for Rizzo. He recently donated $150,000 for new lights for the field.

The North Springs Little League and the Florida Pokers travel team also are among the top programs in the state. Both programs will join the high school team in adding Douglas tributes to their uniforms this season.

Douglas High Eagles head coach Todd Fitz-Gerald was at the vigil for Rizzo’s speech and says it was a perfect reflection of the town, the family, the teachers and the mentors that raised him.

“For him to come back in this time of need, where everybody’s leaning on one another, for him to do what he did says a lot about his character and the kind of person that he is,” Fitz-Gerald says. “He made it very clear that he’s a Floridian, he’s a Douglas graduate and he’s a Parklander.”

Thie city has taken a devastating blow, but the healing has begun, says Fitz-Gerald, whose team was on the practice field at North Broward Prep on Friday.

“It’s just a tight-knit group of people who stand behind each other through thick and thin,” he says. “We definitely took a punch, that’s for sure. It’s not enough to knock us out. Our community, the school community, is too strong to allow the work of one insane individual to do that to us. We’re not going to give him the satisfaction of cowering down, I can tell you that.”