Volunteers working to save memorials

Mementos outside school, in park to be preserved

Parkland historian Jeff Schwartz has watched the flower bouquets shrivel, the Stoneman Douglas posters become pulp, the loving, handwritten notes blister in the South Florida sun.

So on March 15 — one month and one day after the Stoneman Douglas shooting — Schwartz and a team of volunteer conservators will begin preserving objects left at makeshift memorials for the 17 students and faculty killed in the massacre.

It’s a morbid task, but Schwartz and company must work in haste to preserve the shrines of teddy bears, balloons, tributes, photographs of victims framed in hearts, white crucifixes and stars of David before it’s too late.

“The initial goal is to get these items out of the weather and sun and into storage, and to do it as quickly as possible,” says Schwartz, president of the Parkland Historical Society.

Just two days after the Valentine’s Day shooting, Parkland city commissioner Ken Cutler asked Schwartz to preserve the mementos.

To preserve the objects, Schwartz will work with Parkland Historical Society board members, archivists, Stoneman Douglas students and teachers, and Pam Schwartz (no relation), a curator leading the One Orlando Collection Initiative to preserve Pulse nightclub artifacts.

Why wait a month? Sensitivity played a large role, as school members, Douglas

SUSAN STOCKER/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER A city commissioner asked Parkland historian Jeff Schwartz to preserve the mementos.

STAFF PHOTOS BY SUSAN STOCKER Stuffed animals along the makeshift memorial at the school are beginning to fade. The prayer candles have melted, and the roses have withered.