Garden of remembrance

Press, 24 September 1987, Page 4

Garden of remembrance

By

DAVID CLARKSON

Early in 1986 in a classroom at Bromley School, Louisa Damodran put crayon to paper to draw her family. The drawing shows the four of them standing in line, with her younger brother, Michael, on the left, her mother and father on the right, and Louisa in the centre in a long yellow dress. Her teacher, Mrs

Jacqui McMillan, put the six year old’s picture up on the classroom wall. It was still there the day Louisa was abducted and drowned in the Waimakarirl River last October. The picture has now been framed and presented to her family by the school staff at a ceremony yesterday to dedicate a garden in her memory.

For her father, Mr Bob Damodran, the picture was a surprise and he says it will hang in the living room. Mrs Aynsley Damodran recalls seeing it in April, 1986, when she helped the teacher to name the four figures. At Louisa’s funeral last November, the school’s headmaster, ’ Mr David Bates, said the school wanted to plant a memorial garden and

yesterday that promise was kept in a small courtyard among the classrooms. A simple black plaque, a garden of roses and a flowering cherry tree were dedicated and floral tributes were placed on the plaque. Mrs Damodran did the formal planting of the tree, in front of staff, parents and pupils. She chose it herself,

after admiring the pink, flowering cherries in Hagley Park. She also bought a rose, Chicago Peace, to join other roses and smaller plants in the garden. She said after the ceremony, “Louisa loved flowers, all kinds of flowers. Roses were her favourites, and she liked everything that was pink.”