. . . wrote parent NMG on Twitter. Her daughter died in the Sandy Hook shooting, December, 2012. “AG, we used to wait for you to come home. Now you wait for us. Hold on, little one. Hold on.”
A memorial honoring the 20 first graders and six educators killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting opened to the public on Sunday, nearly a month before the 10-year commemoration.
The twenty-six names are engraved in the top of a stone wall supporting the pool. Water flows spiral inwards towards a planter at the center, where a young sycamore is planted to symbolize the young age of the victims. The motion of the water embraces the tree and captures the energy, form, and cycle of the landscape around it, Visitors are encouraged to give a candle or a flower to the water, which will carry the offering across the space in an act of bridging the deceased and the living.
A cobblestone walkway surrounds the feature, its outer ring lined with black-eyed Susan flowers. Other paths lead past a variety of plantings on the grounds.
The design was selected out of 189 submissions by the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission after a five-year process.
With tree leaves having fallen, the new Sandy Hook School is now visible from the memorial. The new school was built on the same property, but not in the same footprint as the old one, which was torn down after the shooting.
https://www.npr.org/2022/11/13/1136381053/sandy-hook-memorial
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/us/sandy-hook-memorial-10-year-commemoration
