LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Visitors are still heading to a memorial outside Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga., to mourn the killings of two 14-year-olds and two teachers at that school last week in a mass shooting. Two Los Angeles-based artists helped construct that memorial. As NPR's Lakshmi Singh reports, they built unexpected connections.
LAKSHMI SINGH, BYLINE: Today marks a bittersweet moment for David Maldonado and Noah Reich. They're leaving this rural Georgia town three days after they arrive to help the community grieve its loss the only way these artists know, by building floral altars to the fallen in places like Las Vegas, Uvalde, Nashville, now Winder.
The journey began with a familiar late-night trip to a big-box store for supplies.
(SOUNDBITE OF TRUCK ENGINE RUNNING)
SINGH: The next day, the set designers assemble wood frames...
(SOUNDBITE OF POWER SAW WHIRRING)
SINGH: ...Spray-paint them in white...
(SOUNDBITE OF SPRAY-PAINT SPRAYING)
SINGH: ...And carefully arrange white silk flowers around the portraits of the four victims. Donations of more flowers, cards and other remembrances follow. Maldonado says the result is intense.
DAVID MALDONADO: We have gone through about 350 roses, which means about 350 people have left written dedications or messages at the memorial space, and it continues to grow every day.
SINGH: His partner, Noah Reich, says their mission began after the 2016 shooting that claimed 49 lives at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
NOAH REICH: We were too afraid to act. We were afraid to go to a gay bar. We were afraid to go out to a gay club. These spaces that were sanctuaries for us and sanctuaries for our community were essentially taken away from us.
SINGH: Reich and Maldonado launched their nonprofit, Classroom of Compassion, to teach families how to build altars and other memorials for their loved ones. And through crowdfunding, they devote their talents to communities in pain. Winder is the 21st.
SHARON LORD: To come from that distance to support this little town, it means a lot.
SINGH: Sharon Lord is a teacher who drove the better part of an hour from Covington, Ga. She says she's heartbroken. She also says she's grateful to see strangers show up for Winder.
LORD: It moved me more than I expected. And just, you know, laying the flowers I brought and seeing a sea of - I don't know. It just - whoo - it got me.
MALDONADO: A lot of the times we only hear about the victims when the news cycle is actively covering it. So to be able to give the community a little bit of a longer time to sit in that grief and to sit in that healing is something that we find incredibly important.
SINGH: For Maldonado and Reich, it's now back to LA to regroup and prepare for the next community on their journey of compassion.
Lakshmi Singh, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF WILL HARRISON'S "SUNDOWN DRIFTER") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
