There were several large sections of Morningside and Virginia-Highland where multiple homes were demolished in anticipation of I-485. Some of these have been transformed into popular community parks. Exploring the inventive playscapes in these parks was, for my daughter, one of the highlights of every visit to Atlanta when she was growing up.
The most extensive of these once-vacant areas is on Virginia Avenue, across from Inman School (formerly Elementary, now Middle), where eleven houses were torn down to make way for a highway interchange. The land remained scrubby and untended for many years. In 1988 it became John Howell Memorial Park, named for a Virginia-Highland resident who helped lead the fight against I-485 and who died from complications of HIV. Along the Virginia Avenue entrance stand eleven granite piers (modeled on those on St. Louis Place and elsewhere in the neighborhood), each bearing a plaque with an address of one of the lost homes. Appealing landscaping, a children’s playground and a sandy area for volleyball guarantee that the park is always lively.
One section of John Howell Park has become the Cunard Memorial Playground. In the summer of 2003, a sudden blinding thunderstorm stopped evening rush hour traffic throughout the city. A huge oak tree, its roots weakened, fell across North Highland diagonally onto the SUV of a young family, killing Lisa Cunard and her two sons, Max, age three and Owen, just six months old. Her husband, Brad, who had been driving, survived physically unharmed. The parents had just picked up Max from preschool, and Lisa was riding in the back seat, as she usually did, to be closer to her boys. Firefighters from that old Virginia-Highland station rushed across the street, ready to extricate victims and perform CPR, but it was too late.
My daughter and I were in Atlanta during the tragedy. When the storm hit, with violent force, we were stuck in the car with my parents along another tree-lined road not far away. Atlanta’s trees are majestic and many, but they can also be a threat. Our vulnerability, as lightning struck all around us, was imminently clear. The ride home was slow-going and nerve-wracking, but we were lucky; we made it. That night we heard the news about the Cunard family, who had been so terribly, horribly, heart-breakingly unlucky.
D has a particular fondness for the Cunard Playground. Like many Atlantans, we both feel a connection to the family, because we remember that hideous night so well. I knew the tree that fell; I knew the house in front of which it had stood. We had been in that exact spot many times.
The playscapes at the Cunard include easy-going toddler attractions and some especially ingenious contraptions for older kids. I don’t have the words to describe these latter creations; I’ve never encountered such things before. As if to emphasize the need to live this short life to the fullest, they are apparently intended for determined daredevils. D has always referred to this park as the “spinny” park because it’s possible there to spin round and round, at varying speeds, in a crazy variety of ways. When she urges me to have a go on one of these whirling oddities, I know I’m a real grown-up, because I’m sure that immediate nausea would follow. I also know I would have loved all these inventively twirling things, just as D does, when I was a kid. My husband has tried them, and even he must admit that he also is an adult.
The Cunard Playground was, like the defeat of I-485, a remarkable community effort. The grieving friends, family and neighbors of the Cunard family joined together to ensure that this loving mother and her two boys, so very young, will be remembered in a vital and meaningful way. The playground is a unique and fitting memorial, an exultant space that Max and Owen would, no doubt, have cherished.
