WAUKESHA, Wis. — Six ribbon-like pillars coming together to form a large heart were illumined in blue for six minutes at Grede Park Thursday evening — each of those pillars and minutes representing one of the six lives lost at the Waukesha Christmas Parade attack on Nov. 21, 2021.
The Waukesha Parade Memorial officially opened to the public during a ceremony exactly three years later, at 4:39 p.m.
“This memorial is one more symbol of what it means to be Waukesha Strong,” said Mayor Shawn Reilly.
The park is now an epicenter for healing, with places for reflection including six benches and plaques for each of the deceased victims: Ginny Sorenson, Leanna Owen, Tamara Durand, Bill Hospel, Jane Kulich and 8-year-old Jackson Sparks.
The heart sculpture is framed by a wall of tiles that hundreds of community members had a hand in. Artist Carmen De La Paz organized the effort. More than one thousand tiles are engraved with hopeful messages and glazed in shades of blue.
Waukesha County District Attorney Sue Opper prosecuted Darrel Brooks, the man who drove an SUV through the Waukesha Christmas Parade three years ago. But on Thursday she spoke of hope and resilience: “I was thinking of the strength of it — the pillars and then the coming together in the middle. I thought about the symbolism of the six different pillars.”
Opper offered an interpretation of each pillar’s meaning extending to a facet of the community-wide response: the six lives lost, police officers, EMS teams, citizens in the parade, downtown Waukesha businesses owners and the community as a whole.
The dedication of the Parade Memorial at Grede follow’s last year’s dedication of the Main Street Parade Memorial, a heart-themed marker near the location of the tragedy.
Mayor Reilly says more additions to the Grede Park Memorial are in the works for next year. The city has plans for another heart-themed sculpture and a Survivor Tree from the 9/11 memorial in New York.
