THOUSANDS SHOW UP TO BUILD MEMORIAL
MEMORIAL, FROM PAGE 1:
“We wanted to create something where people could have a beautiful place to reflect and gather,” Pleggenkuhle said. “To get people to talk, to connect and share their stories.”
Standing with hands held and gripping illuminated candles with their other hands, Las Vegas residents Ed and Gloria Avila wept as they recalled the anxious hours they spent waiting last week before finding out their niece, Denise Cohen, and her boyfriend Derrick “Bo” Taylor had been shot dead on Sunday night.
“We were able to identify her only because of her American flag clothing,” said Gloria Avila, holding up a photo of Cohen smiling in a red, white and blue outfit.
On the Wall of Remembrance at the new memorial, the Avilas placed a framed photo of Cohen and Taylor alongside dozens of other photos, flower bouquets and homemade signs.
Las Vegan Tony Hernandez, 42, spent all day on Thursday and Friday planting trees, flowers and other shrubs in the garden after hearing about the opportunity to volunteer for the project earlier in the week on Instagram. Both days, Hernandez returned to the site with his children, Roman, 8 and Gavin, 6, so they could contribute as well.
With more than 300 volunteers on site through Friday afternoon, a sign on the worksite asked that no more people enter to help, because there were too many volunteers contributing already, Hernandez said.
“They’d offer a few dozen people at a time to grab some water and take a break, and their spots would literally be filled in seconds by the people waiting around,” Hernandez said. “There were a ton of people wanting to volunteer.”
The Community Memorial Garden wasn’t initially pictured to be as extravagant as it turned out, designers said. But the final product served as yet another example of the Las Vegas community producing “remarkable” results in the wake of disaster, speakers at Friday’s ribbon-cutting event said.
While Pleggenkuhle and Perez initially hoped the city would support their idea for a small pop-up garden, Las Vegas officials went “above and beyond,” Pleggenkuhle said. Stonerose was given a half-acre plot of land to create the memorial, and other Las Vegas businesses, like landscaping company Sunworld, Moon Valley and Star plant nurseries, as well as S R Trucking, also contributed time and resources to building the Community Memorial Garden.
The initial design for the garden was done on a napkin Monday before crews went to work.
“It has been amazing, and a lot of tears have been shed,” Pleggenkuhle said. “To think we could sketch something on the back of a napkin and thousands of people would show up to build something and heal a city ... That’s what our special city stands for.” chris.kudialis@lasvegassun. com / 702-948-7841 / @kudialislvsun