As the city begin work on the Waukesha Christmas Parade Memorial, some members of the community are still working to compete special tiles that will be added to the site. One community group put in some extra effort to make sure their voices are part of the memorial and they invited TMJ4 News to be there while they brought their art to life.
“You want to press more? Some more stardust?” asked Allison Slamar, the program coordinator for the Adaptive Community Approach Program (ACAP).
“Yeah,” said Alex, an ACAP member, as he laughed and worked to press on the stamp.
It might take him a little longer to put the stamps into the clay tiles, but he is incredibly determined to leave his mark on the memorial. The Waukesha Christmas Parade Memorial honors the six people killed and dozens hurt during the parade in 2021. The memorial will be a heart sculpture and hundreds of memorial tiles created by the community.
Slamar told TMJ4 News reporter Rebecca Klopf, that a month ago, she was working on a way to make sure the members could be a part of the community memorial.
"Many people were at the parade. You can see our shop is on Main Street, so coming back that following Monday, we were right in the thick of things,” said Slamar.
She told us even though some members might have to work in teams or use special equipment, they wanted to do whatever was necessary to create a tile.
"I love Waukesha and I care for the people who was in that tragedy,” said Maria, an ACAP member who was finishing her tile. "I put friend, love, I love you."
Kendall and Mick even let Rebecca help find the letters they were looking for to complete their tile.
"I love it,” said Slamar.
“Yay,” shouted Mick as the last letters went down. The complete tile read Waukesha Everyone.
In the end, every member was able to create a tile that they thought represented themselves and the message they wanted to share with others.
"I hope it makes people happy when they see it,” said Alex.
The tiles made on Monday put the number created at 800, according to the city. The goal is to have more than 1000 on the memorial which will be completed in November on the third anniversary of the parade tragedy.
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