LANSING, Mich. — The Michigan COVID Memorial has been around since 2021 and has helped hundreds of people remember their loved ones who died from the virus. Now, the memorial is looking for a permanent home.
"We just wanted a way to honor those families that have lost someone in a more special way than how they were being remembered in the media," Cheryl Garza said.
And for the past two years that’s exactly what the Michigan COVID Memorial has done, putting names of the people who have died from the virus on hearts and hanging them up inside the Lansing Mall and the Jackson Mall. So far, hundreds of hearts have been hung.
"Almost 400, which is just a small bucket of the total of people who died from the virus," Laura Canfield said.
Starting the Memorial for Canfield and Garza was personal. During the pandemic, Garza's husband and Canfield’s son Freddy lost his life to COVID at the young age of 42.
"It’s not something you thought you’ll have to go through. The natural cause of events is that your children are supposed to outlive you. So losing a child is I think the hardest thing to do," Canfield said.
But that pain of not having Freddy here is something that motivates Canfield and Garza to keep the memorial going. The two are now hoping to make it permanent, and that process starts with building a 7-foot statue.
"It’s going to be a cut out of the state of Michigan out of steel. It's going to have Michigan COVID Memorial across the Upper Peninsula. The heart is going to be etched that says never forgotten. There's a poem on it, and then, on the backside there's the reason why it started and why we are still going today," Garza said.
Once the statue is complete, Canfield and Garza are hoping to find the right location to place it.
"We would like to keep it somewhere here in Lansing. We want it on property where it's not going to cost anybody to go see it, to park to go see it, to go around it, to sit there with their loved ones. We want to keep it in a spot where anyone can have access to it at any time," Garza said.
And as the Michigan COVID Memorial gets one step closer to finding a permanent home, Canfield and Garza have one message for Freddy, the man who inspired it all.
"The biggest thing would be just to tell him I love him, and I was proud of him, so proud of him," Garza said.
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