From Miami to Mayfield, a wall of flowers and photos gives people a place to mourn

On Monday, Wayne and Nancy Rambo made their way from a friend’s house where they’re staying to the chain link fence in front of what used to be the old county courthouse.

The fence is now made of flowers — daisies, roses, carnations, baby’s breath — pushed through the fence links to form a floral wall. In between the flowers are pictures of those lost to the Dec. 10 tornadoes, some of whom the Rambos knew.

“We’ve got people in there,” Nancy Rambo said, friends who weren’t as lucky as they were to ride the tornadoes out in their bathroom. Friends like Derek Gilbert, who lived next door to them, and now smiled out from the fence.

Wayne Rambo said “God moved in,” and saved them under sheetrock as their roof peeled off. They moved up and down the line, pointing out the people they knew. Others cried, some prayed.

“I’m glad they did this,” Nancy said.

“They” is really Leo Soto, a hospitality worker from Miami, who first created a memorial after the Surfside condo disaster in June that killed 98 people.

“I saw the power the memorial had to bring people together, and something about the tornadoes really struck me and I felt compelled to help,” Soto said in a phone interview from Miami. He flew into Nashville last Tuesday, and stopped at florists along the way, asking for donations of flowers. The Bill Doran Flower Company in Herring, Ill. donated about $40,000 worth of fresh flowers for the wall.

Then Soto started to make laminated photos of those lost.

“That’s the most important part that I learned at Surfside,” he said. “Every single day we went back and added people as they were identified. Then people added their own elements.”

Soto returned to Miami on Sunday, but was glad to hear that people are visiting the wall.

“I was hoping it would give the community a place to come together and begin the healing process,” he said.

This story was originally published December 21, 2021 at 7:26 AM.