Valley St. Eyed For Homicide Memorial

A Career High School biology teacher whose son was shot and killed 20 years ago has a new site in mind and new support from a local architecture firm and forestry nonprofit in her long-running quest to create a public reflection garden in honor of all New Haven victims of gun violence.

Marlene Miller Pratt, a ninth-grade biology teacher at Career and a former resident of South Genesee St. in West Rock, updated neighbors about the proposed reflection garden project at the most recent Westville-West Hills Community Management Team’s (WWHCMT) monthly meeting at the Mauro-Sheridan School on Fountain Street.

Presenting alongside Urban Resources Initiative (URI) Associate Director Chris Ozyck, Pratt announced that URI, a local community forestry nonprofit associated with the Yale School of Forestry, has agreed to help build a small, public garden to commemorate locals who have died from gun violence.

She said that the garden will also serve as a leafy and secluded respite for friends and relatives of those victims, as well as for any other interested members of the public, to escape from the cacophony of city life and spend a few moments of quiet, solitary reflection.

Pratt has been working on this project since last spring, three years after she moved from North Carolina back to New Haven.

Last year, she reached out to city parksDirector Becky Bombero about building a reflection garden in honor of young victims like her son, Gary Kyshon ​“Kiki” Miller, who was shot and killed while only 20 years old during a fight in May 1998 at the McConaghy Terrace public housing complex on Valley Street.

Initial plans to locate the garden near Edgewood Park stalled out last summer, in part due to a lack of community outreach and skepticism from the spot’s immediate neighbors.

Now Pratt has her eyes set on another location, a small plot of city park land in the shadow of West Rock across the street from 100 Valley St., just a few blocks away from where her son was killed back in 1998.

The grassy lawn is currently just vacant green space owned by the city. The plot’s edge along the West River is lined with sugar maples, honey lucusts and sycamore trees. Ozyck said that a few vines need to be taken down, and the invasive species Japanese knotweed is prevalent.

Inspired by the size and design of Lindsey Park, another memorial park that URI helped build in the Wooster Square area, Pratt and Ozyck are looking to use half an acre of Valley Street park land to build out the new reflection garden.

Pratt and Ozyck hope to present the project to the Parks Commission during an upcoming monthly meeting at the Parks Department’s offices at 720 Edgewood Ave.

Parks Director Becky Bombero said that Pratt must first secure the support of Valley Street neighbors and the Westville management team before moving her concept to drawing and then to the Parks Commission. Bombero said that she plans to meet with Pratt to ensure that she has met all those criteria before getting her set up to appear before the Parks Commission in April.

The commission must ultimately decide whether or not to grant Pratt and URI permission to create the garden on city-owned land.

“Right now, we [mothers of gun violence victims] are just going to a cemetery” to commemorate our children, she said about the impetus behind building this garden. ​“And it’s lonely and desolate there. We just want to remember them in a beautiful area.”

Ozyck said that URI will serve as the project’s fiduciary as Pratt raises funds for the garden, and that they will provide the help of Yale architecture students and Yale summer interns to remove invasive species, clear the area of garbage, and support the health of existing plants and trees.

Ozyck also said that the local architecture firm Svigals + Parnters has agreed to help envision and realize the project pro bono, pending approval from neighbors and from the city parks department.

Pratt said that, as a student at Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU), she used to tutor needy boys and girls in the West Rock area at a local community center.

She said that the young man who shot and killed her son during a dispute at McConaghy Terrace also happened to be one of the students she worked with years earlier as a tutor. She said that he was a troubled young man. His father was dying of AIDS; he did not receive much attention or guidance at home.

“It’s ironic that I’m back in the community and trying to do something like this that would be beautiful here,” she said. ​“We’re just looking for something serene, and something where the city will remember our children.”

Pratt carried along with her a binder of information about her past advocacy for her son, and her hopes and dreams for the proposed garden.

She had scans of New Haven Register articles dating back to the late 1990s that showed her canvassing McConaghy Terrace, posting fliers and talking with neighbors to try to figure out who killed her son and why. ​“Need Closure!” the flier reads. ​“I NEED To Know Who? Why?”

Ultimately the assailant was found, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Pratt is currently a member of a Survivors of Homicide support group that meets regularly at the city police station at 1 Union Ave. She said that her involvement with that group for the past year has helped spur her passion and need to realize this project.

She said that she recently connected with the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven to get help on finding donors who may be interested in funding the project. She said that she is in the process of reaching out to local churches and to upwards of 356 other local parents who have lost children to gun violence to see who would be interested in helping maintain the cleanliness of the garden on a regular basis.

“Nobody’s going to understand unless they’ve been through it,” she said. ​“People say: it’s going to get better. Time will heal. You’ve get over it. Stop it.” She said that she knew she needed to find other fathers and mothers who have lost children to gun violence if she were to get any kind of closure on her own trauma and loss.

Also in her binder is a letter of support from U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, who reached out to Pratt after reading her story in the New Haven Register last spring. Pratt said that she just sent off a letter to President Trump, appealing for support at the highest levels of U.S. government to help make the reflection garden idea a reality.

Pratt drew out a general design for the garden that Ozyck emphasized was still very much just a concept, not yet approved by the Parks department. The drawing shows a small garden plot centered by a tree and a bench, surrounded by a hexagon perimeter of bricks. She said that she wants each brick to display the name of a different victim of gun violence.

At the community management team meeting last Wednesday, Pratt gathered 29 signatures of support from the 36 attendees. After she and Ozyck finished their presentation, the room burst into applause. Westville Alder Adam Marchand came up to her after the meeting and thanked her for her work on such an important project.