On Sunday, roughly a month before the 10-year remembrance of the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, a memorial honoring the 20 first graders and six teachers murdered in the attack was dedicated to their memory.
On December 14, 2012, Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo unveiled the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial in Newtown, Connecticut, site of the 2012 school shooting.
The memorial is described on the designers’ website as a “circling network” of trails that wind through the forest, past ponds and meadows, and finally to a fountain set in a granite basin etched with the names of the deceased.
A young sycamore tree, representing the youth of the victims, is planted in a central planter as the water flows in a spiral inwards. According to the website, “the flowing water hugs the tree, capturing the spirit, shape, and cycle of the landscape surrounding it.”
To further the idea of uniting the living and the dead, it says, “Visitors are urged to give a light or a flower to the water, which will convey the offering throughout the space.”
After receiving 189 proposals over the course of five years, the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission settled on the winning design.
Catherine Violet Hubbard’s mother Jennifer told CNN on Sunday that she had visited the memorial a few weeks ago and again on Saturday, when it was officially dedicated to the victims’ families. Catherine Violet Hubbard was six years old when she was killed in the massacre.
Catherine’s participation in the memorial is meaningful to Hubbard because “it is a shared and sacred grief of 26 families,” as he said to CNN.
Hubbard expressed her gratitude to the Newtown Memorial Commission and all those who contributed to the monument.
She said the peaceful area was “beautifully arranged” so that those touched by the shooting might think about the lives lost there.
Hubbard remarked that the memorial was more than a simple reminder of the hardships the group had endured.
It’s a symbol of everything our community has achieved as one united unit. She went on to describe the area as a place where “those who visit are reminded of the healing, love, and compassion we’ve attempted to bring to the globe.”
Hubbard established the Catherine H. Hubbard Animal Sanctuary in her name. She expresses her desire for the public monument and other such endeavors to demonstrate that “humanity and human[s] are good.”
