COPLEY TWP.: Brendan Ahern was at the prayer vigil at Copley Community Park the night of the Copley shootings a year ago Tuesday.
“My sister was best friends with Autumn [Johnson],” said Ahern, who will be a sophomore at Copley High School this fall.
Ahern, 16, decided to do something to memorialize Autumn and the six others who were killed Aug. 7, 2011, when Michael Hance went on a shooting rampage in a Copley Township neighborhood. Hance was then shot and killed by a Copley policeman.
On the last weekend in July, Ahern and several Boy Scouts from Troop 382 gathered around the southwest end of the skating pond at the same park where the prayer vigil was held last year. The scouts were there for Ahern’s Eagle Scout project to create a memorial garden at the park.
“I really hope it is a place where people can go and remember the tragedy … and not forget what happened,” Ahern said.
With six merit badges left to complete, Ahern said he did his Eagle Project this summer so that it would be finished by the first-year anniversary of the shooting and a planned vigil at the park on Tuesday night.
There is one more visible memorial in the township to the shooting victims: a black granite bench at the east end of Copley Circle that is inscribed with the names and pictures of each of the victims.
The bench was a joint effort of Hummel Funeral Homes and Midwest Engraving and Midwest Everlasting Memorials of Wadsworth, which donated money, material and labor.
Ahern, who plays football on the Copley High School team, said donations came from the community to pay for the garden.
The garden includes six Judd viburnum plants and one Spring Snow crab apple tree in an arch-shaped plot.
Ahern, son of Colleen and Sean Ahern, remembers the night of the shootings, when he stood with hundreds of others for the vigil where his garden is now located.
“It was really quiet,” he said. “Everybody was still shocked and upset. It was a really moving and big thing for all the people there who were remembering the victims of the shootings.”
The shootings last month at a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., brought back bad memories, Ahern said.
“We can all relate to how those families are feeling,” he said.
Jim Carney can be reached at 330-996-3576 or at jcarney@thebeaconjournal.com.