Moms Reach Finish Line On Healing Garden

Three moms who lost children to New Haven’s gun violence have put the finishing touches on a four-year quest to shine light on the painfully difficult journey of healing with a stunning new memorial park.

The three women — Pamela Jaynez, Marlene Miller Pratt, and Celeste Robinson Fulcher —did some final mulching and weed-picking to prepare for this coming Saturday’s long-awaited grand opening of the New Haven Botanical Garden of Healing Dedicated to Victims of Gun Violence at 11 a.m.

The green space and tribute park sits in the shadow of West Rock at 105 Valley St. Its opening coincides with a new wave of increased gun violence in New Haven.

With help from the state and city governments and a nationally known New Haven-based architectural firm, the women created the garden along with Urban Resources Initiative (URI). URI director Colleen Murphy-Dunning and the trio became like sisters through bonding over dozens of late-night phone calls about fundraising, designs, and planning meetings.

This past Saturday morning, the moms got help from URI members, staff and students from Hill Regional Career High School, and other volunteers to finish up the garden before opening.

As the team worked, community members passed through the no-longer fenced-in garden, taking in the garden-makers’ cry to end gun violence.

Most of the project’s construction took place last year during the pandemic.

Career High Assistant Principal Steve Ciarcia and science teacher Cynthia Scheetz joined the teamSaturday to support their colleague Miller-Pratt. Miller-Pratt has been a science teacher at Career since 2015.

With gardening gloves and a spade in hand, each mom put their knees to the soil and created the garden’s final flower bed. The triangular area is separated into three beds, one for each of the mothers who spearheaded the project. The team planted purple, red, and yellow annuals in the personalized garden bed just behind the garden’s outdoor learning space. The colors were picked by the trio to represent their children.

Red For Sacrifice

Miller-Pratt picked the color red to represent sacrifice, richness, and royalty.

Miller-Pratt was given the idea of the garden from God in 2017, she said. While teaching one day, she told her student Ronaldo Acosta about her idea to remember her son and others on a larger scale. Not long after their conversation, Acosta provided Miller-Pratt with a drawn design of her idea. And so her journey began, coming up with a design with URI and the city, and seeking the right location.

Fulcher and Jaynez came on board in 2018 immediately after hearing Miller-Pratt discuss her idea at a local survivors-of-homicide group meeting. ​“I knew I couldn’t do it alone. I needed other moms help who knew my pain,” Miller-Pratt said.

She looked at several green spaces including some on Edgewood, Sprigside Avenue, and Osborn-Goffe Terrace.

Miller-Pratt’s decided to find a space in the West Rock/West Hill area to have the park near where her son, Gary Kyshon ​“Ki Ki” Miller, was shot and killed in 1998 on South Genesee Street.

When she found the Valley Street field, she sat by a thick-trunked tree in the far back, near the West River.

“It felt right,” she recalled of that first visit to the park.

The space hiding in the shadow of West Rock immediately brought her tranquility, she said. She noticed a butterfly graze by and dance in circles just in front of her. Its whimsical freedom reminded her of her comical son and his gravestone. which is engraved with the phrase ​“I’m free.”

“When I sat there. I felt free. I heard Ki Ki tell me, ​‘Mommy this is the space.’”

Twenty years after the death of her son, Miller-Pratt finally found a space to remember him and all other victims of gun violence forever.

Another mother who lost her child to local gun violence, Winifred Phillips-Cue (who passed in 2020), was also a part of the leading team. Phillips-Cue lost her 31-year-old son Lavias Phillips in 2008. Phillips-Cue helped Miller-Pratt fight for the entire acre of the green space on Valley Street rather then the half acre the city told her was all she would be able to maintain.

During the building of the garden, Miller-Pratt could often be found stopping at different corners of town with a white board listing hundreds of names of gun violence victims. She would talk to young people and ask them if they recognized the names then encourage them to visit the park when it opens.

“It’s not just a garden, it’s awareness,” Miller-Pratt said.

Several Yale students joined forces with the trio to find the names of gun violence victims going back decades. They searched through hundreds of online obituaries and media stories.

Meanwhile, New Haven’s architectural and planning firm Svigals + Partners donated design help for the garden.

Every time Miller-Pratt walks down the walkway she attempts to make-sense of what was causing the violence at the time. ​“Who was in leadership? What era was it?” she often asks herself while looking at the memorial of bricks.

When Miller-Pratt gets up close to a ​“Lost Generation” sculpture, she said, she often can’t help but see the handles of gun in the shapes of the metal. ​“You can see the gun violence full circle,” she said.

To give the garden a separate feel from visiting a cemetery, the design team decided the bricks would highlight victims’ names and ages. ​“The age really hits you,” Miller-Pratt said.

“The cemetery reminds you of the day everyone was in black. It brings me back more than 20 years to the pain and tragedy,” Miller-Pratt said. Jaynez added that it brings her back to first hearing about the murder of her son.

At the garden, they said, loved ones of victims can find beauty in their friend or families loss. On a memory wall, visitors are encouraged to find a quote that relates to loved ones they lost. Miller-Pratt resonates most with the quote, ​“Their smile was contagious, personable, comical, loving, and kind.” It reminds her of her son who was always ​“clowning around.”

“I had to sacrifice my child so that 700 other mothers can heal,” Miller-Pratt said.

While walking the path or watching the passing butterflies, she said, she often has conversations with her son, which bring her comfort.

Purple for Royalty

Jaynez chose the color purple to represent her close friend Phillips-Cue, who also helped with the project. Purple was the favorite color of her 19-year-old son, Walter Marquese Tyrell Jaynez. who was killed in 1997.

“This is a second chance for my son,” she said.

Miller-Pratt and Jaynez both attended Polly T. McCabe alternative high school for young mothers at the same time. But they didn’t know each other until they met in more tragic motherly circumstances.

“We didn’t ask to be brought together in these ways, but now it’s a bond that can’t be broken,” Jaynez said.

Jaynez said she hopes the garden will help others in the community before they lose someone. ​“We want to help someone put down the gun,” she said. ​“Because they don’t think of the end results when they go pick up a gun.”

Beyond the garden, Jaynez said the city must invest in programming to better teach youth how communicate with each other.

“We didn’t used to resolve problems with guns. These kids don’t talk anything out anymore,” she said.

The month of June is the hardest for Jaynez. This month is the month her son was killed 24 years ago, his birthday, her birthday, and father’s day. (Walter left behind a son and daughter.

The journey through the park is much like the journey of healing, the trio agreed. The park’s tree of life, wind chimes, Magnitude Walkway, The Lost Generation sculpture, and wall of quotes all serve as indicators of the grieving and healing process.

The Lost Generation sculpture serves as the beginning of the journey. The metal structure depicts a family together. The wind chimes minimize the sound of passing cars and nature, resembling the ​“numbing moment” when one learns they have lost their loved one.

As one walks down the Magnitude Walkway of 700 victims of gun violence, the chimes continue, but transition seamlessly into the ringing sound of church bells during a funeral, followed by a more peaceful ringing of a transition to heaven.

The metal family dissolves when you look up from reading the many names and ages engraved on individual bricks of the walkway. The years continue on like the violence, all the way up until those lost so far in 2021.

The end of the walkway nears the gentle flowing West River, which hums a tune of liveliness. The walkway meets at an outdoor classroom-style seating area, which circles a tree of life.

The surrounding memory wall, made up of stones and quotes, is aimed at bringing positive and personal thoughts of lost loved ones back to life. Singing birds and freely floating butterflies great visitors as they sit there. During each visit. the garden’s design offers this evolution of healing. By the end, the natures beauty supplies a sense comfort and peace.

The garden keeps 700 New Haveners from being forgotten.

“This is the light at the end of the tunnel,” Jaynez said.

Yellow For Sunshine

Fulcher picked the color yellow. ​“It’s like sunshine. Happiness. Hope. and Joy,” she said.

While working with the group of volunteers on the garden’s final touches Saturday, Fulcher stepped away to sit on a rock towards the back end of the park bordering the West River.

She was in need of a break from the ​“overwhelming” reality that the trio’s dream of the garden was finally complete.

“It just hit me in the middle of all of this,” she said. ​“This is the last piece to remembering my baby forever.”

“When we started, I was still learning how to heal,” said Fulcher, whose daughter Erika Renee ​“Hoppy” Robinson was shot and killed in 2013 by a stray bullet meant for others at a New Haven nightclub called the Key Club Cabaret.

“This journey has made me stronger. It’s hard to think about her all the time when I know I can’t reach her. But I pushed myself through it for this finish. For this peace,” Fulcher said.

Fulcher said her husband doesn’t do well in graveyards. In the process of creating the garden, she brought him there, and was happy to see the immediate comfort it brought him.

While working in the park, the trio finds joy in the simple sight of seeing walkers deter their route on Valley Street to take in the space.

Fulcher’s hope is that the park will make New Haveners and beyond take action to stop the gun violence.

“You won’t feel the same way leaving as you did when you first got here,” said Fulcher.

Fulcher described the process of laying the bricks as ​“a knife that keeps turning.” She said the metaphorical knife has been there since the loss of her daughter. Whenever she slightly heals, the knife is again turned inside her. because the shootings continue to take lives.

“People hear gun shots everyday but don’t connect them with a person.” Fulcher said. ​“Well. here is the connection. Right there in each of those bricks.”

URI plans to keep up with maintenance of the garden every Saturday until October. The trio is looking to assign volunteers to help keep up with the garden’s maintenance each Saturday. They are calling on churches, local organizations, and community members to dedicate at least one Saturday out of the year to the garden’s upkeep.