Nov. 14 (UPI) -- A memorial to honor the 20 children and six educators killed during a 2012 mass shooting at Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School has opened to the public.
The 5.3-acre Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial in the town of Newtown opened to the public for the first time Sunday, ahead of the 10-year anniversary of the Dec. 14, 2012, shooting.
The $3.7 million memorial was designed by Dan Affleck and Ben Waldo to include a circling network of paths that take visitors through a woodland and across ponds and meadows. At the memorial's center is a pool encircled by a granite basin, the edge of which is engraved with the names of 26 victims. And at the water's center is a tree.
"Water flows spiral inwards towards a planter at the center, where a young sycamore is planted to symbolize the young age of the victims," SWA, the landscape architecture firm behind the memorial, said on its website. "Visitors are encouraged to give a candle or a flower to the water, which will carry the offering across the space in an act of bridging the deceased and the living."
The project was selected from 189 submissions to the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial Commission, which was established in 2013 to decide on a project.
Sunday's public opening came a day after a private ceremony was held for families of the shooting's victims, the Connecticut Post reported.
Jenny Hubbard, whose 6-year-old daughter, Catherine, was killed in the shooting, told Connecticut Public Radio that the memorial is a place where visitors are given space to reflect and contemplate on how the shooting has affected their own lives and how it has changed them.
"This was not an isolated event where you must move on with your life. Our community was impacted and the memorial, I think, is a really poignant reflection place for everybody to honor what we all lost," she said.
