OJAI : Memorial Garden Comforts Parents

Tucked near a stand of eucalyptus trees at a busy intersection, the memorial from Ojai parents to their deceased children is easy to overlook.

Most motorists zip by each day without giving it a second glance. But the parents and other relatives who have had the names of their children engraved on one of the small park’s 41 redwood markers know the place well.

“I drive by every day, so I think about him every day,” Charlotte Maloney, 96, said of the marker for her 57-year-old son Robert, who died in 1989. “I think he’s the oldest one here.”

Patricia Weinberger established the memorial garden last year at Ojai Avenue and Maricopa Highway to ease her pain after her 38-year-old daughter, Rosalind Dwight, died of cancer. Most of the people memorialized at the site are children.

“When I started, it was a comfort,” said Weinberger. “I thought if this is helping me, there might be a lot of other people out there.

“One woman doesn’t know where her child is buried, but now she has this. She told me, ‘Now I have a place to go.’ ”

Weinberger, who has paid for all the markers, plans to spend as much as $10,000 on the memorial and landscaping for the garden. She will increase the number of markers to 100 this week. The only rule is that those memorialized have some tie to the Ojai Valley, which could mean they were born there or simply that their parents live there, Weinberger said.

“It makes no difference if they were children or adults or whether or not they were born in Ojai,” Weinberger said. “After all, they’re still somebody’s children.”

The garden is on Caltrans property that was formerly a patch of scrub. Before she decided to start a formal memorial last year, Weinberger placed a plaque on a large rock at the intersection in 1986, in memory of four firefighters who died battling the Wheeler Springs fire that had threatened the city the previous year.

In 1989, the year her daughter died, Weinberger placed a bench and planted a small garden at the site.

On most days, the area in front of many of the markers is filled with tiny replicas of angels or red roses left by relatives and friends.

“I found a certain comfort and tranquillity,” Weinberger said. “I’ve been blessed in life . . . a lot of people haven’t. Life has been very good to me and if there’s some way I can help, I want to.”