The Sandy Hook Memorial Opens To The Public Nearly 10 Years After 26 People Were Killed In An Elementary School Shooting

  A memorial honoring the 20 first-graders and six teachers killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting opened to the public Sunday, nearly a month before the 10-year anniversary.   

  The Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial, designed by Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo, was publicly unveiled in Newtown, Connecticut where the mass attack took place on December 14, 2012.   

  The memorial consists of a “circular network” of paths that lead visitors through forests, lakes and meadows at the center – a fountain set in a granite basin inscribed with the names of the victims, according to its description on the designers’ website.   

  “The water spirals inwards towards a planter in the centre, where a young plane tree is planted to symbolize the young age of the victims.  The movement of the water embraces the tree and captures the energy, form and cycle of the landscape around it,” the website states.   

  “Visitors are encouraged to offer a candle or a flower to the water, which will carry the offering throughout the space in an act of bridging the dead and the living,” she continues.   

  The design was selected from 189 submissions by the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission after a five-year process.   

  Jennifer Hubbard, whose daughter Catherine Violet Hubbard was six years old when she was shot and killed, told CNN on Sunday that she first saw the memorial a few weeks ago and then again Saturday for the official dedication of the memorial for loved ones. victims.   

  “I’m grateful that Katherine is part of the memorial because it’s a shared and sacred loss of 26 families,” Hubbard told CNN.   

  Hubbard said she appreciates the Newtown Memorial Committee and those involved in creating the tribute.   

  He describes the quiet space as “beautifully appointed” to reflect on the lives taken and affected by the shooting.   

  “This monument goes beyond being a marker of everything we’ve lived through,” Hubbard said.   

  “It’s a reminder of all that we as a community have come together to achieve.  This is a collective space for reflection where all who visit are reminded of the healing, love and compassion we have strived to bring to the world,” he continued.   

  Hubbard founded an animal shelter in honor of her daughter Catherine.  She hopes projects like hers and that of the public monument show “humanity and humanity[s] they are good.”