PARKLAND, Fla. – An important milestone has been reached in the effort to forever honor the victims of the massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The Parkland 17 Memorial Foundation has selected the design for a planned memorial park.
Artist Gordon Huether’s design is based on concentric circles.
There will be a central fountain surrounded by 17 limestone obelisks, a tribute to each of the 17 victims of the tragedy.
Alyssa Alhadeff, Scott Beigel, Martin Duque Anguiano, Nicholas Dworet, Aaron Feis, Jaime Guttenberg, Chris Hixon, Luke Hoyer, Cara Loughran, Gina Montalto, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Meadow Pollack, Helena Ramsay, Alex Schachter, Carmen Schentrup and Peter Wang were killed in the shooting on Feb. 14, 2018.
“The purpose of this is to honor the precious lives that were taken on February 14th,” said Tony Montalto, father of Gina Montalto. “Gordon Huether was able to capture a fantastic sense of what was important, having individual elements for each of the individuals that was taken that day.”
The obelisks will have detailed information about each victim.
There will also be a poem that will be engraved in the surface of the memorial plaza.
“We are deeply humbled and honored to have been selected to create the memorial for the victims of the Parkland school shooting,” said Huether. “We believe this memorial will be a place where friends, families and the community can come together to honor and remember those lives taken in this senseless tragedy.”
The memorial park will be located on a 150-acre preserve bordering Coral Springs and Parkland.
“This will be a place where the community can come to remember them,” said Tony Montalto. “It is important that we do that because our children that were murdered that day, the teachers that were murdered that day, they were all parts of this community.”
While the construction of the project is already underway, it’s families like the Montalto’s that are looking forward to the completed memorial, to honor their daughter and all of the victims, and everyone affected by the lives taken that day.
“We miss her smile, we miss her joy,” said Tony Montalto. “We hope to have people come to this memorial and be able to remember that.”
There is not a definitive date for when the project will be completed because construction really all depends on funding the foundation receives.
If you’d like to help with the memorial, you can do that by donating to https://parkland17.org/.