Phyllis Duncan Has Tended Bellwood’s Moms Memorial Garden for 18 Years Since Her Son Was Killed, and It Now Holds More Than 70 Names

Six mornings a week, Phyllis Duncan goes to a small plot of ground beside the Illinois Prairie Path in Bellwood, just west of Chicago, and tends a garden that carries more than 70 names. Each one belongs to someone lost to gun violence, reckless homicide or suicide. The first loss behind it was her own.

Duncan’s son, Dodavah, was killed in a drive-by shooting 21 years ago. About 18 years ago, she lobbied the village for a strip of land along the trail and turned it into Moms Memorial Garden, CBS News Chicago reported this month. She has kept it going for nearly two decades.

A Plot Won From the Village, One Paver at a Time

The garden is named for Duncan’s support group, Mothers of Murdered Sons and Slain Daughters. The names are written on paver stones set into the ground. They come from families across the near west suburbs and Chicago’s West Side, and the list has grown to more than 70.

“This is a special place. It’s an emotional place,” Duncan told CBS News Chicago.

She described her son as a beautiful, caring young man who loved making people laugh. The last time she saw him was on Mother’s Day.

The garden sits along one of the region’s best-known trails. The Illinois Prairie Path, which opened in 1963, calls itself North America’s first successful rails-to-trails conversion, a former rail line turned into a public path for walkers and cyclists.

Mothers Who Come to Sit and Remember

Duncan recently hosted a community day of remembrance at the garden. Families brought photos of their loved ones and gathered among the pavers.

Among the families CBS News Chicago spoke with was Teresa Burtin. Her son, Marty Burtin Jr., was shot 19 times about 10 years ago. He was her only son, and she told the station that she still has not truly begun to grieve. She called him her “baby boy.”

Tiffany Swygert and George Fox lost their son, Jason. “He went to a party with a couple of coworkers after work and did not come back home,” Swygert said. Fox said Duncan has a motherly love that is real and cannot be bought.

Duncan described the mothers who come to the garden and look at her with tears in their eyes.

A Garden That Keeps Adding Names

The garden keeps growing. Duncan said the losses have become so frequent that they have started to feel ordinary. “Something is wrong. This is not normal, and it has gotten to the point where it seems to be normal,” she said.

The national numbers explain why the pavers keep coming. More than 44,000 people died from firearm-related injuries in the United States in 2024, about 121 every day, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About one-third of those deaths were homicides and more than half were suicides. Firearm injuries were the second leading cause of death for Americans ages 1 to 19.

The CDC says men make up 86% of people killed by guns, and that firearm homicide rates are highest among teens and young adults ages 15 to 34 and among Black Americans, American Indian and Alaska Native people, and Hispanic Americans. Suicide rates are highest among adults 75 and older. More people survive gunshot wounds than die from them, the agency adds, and more than 7 in 10 medically treated firearm injuries come from assaults.

Those figures cover every kind of loss the Bellwood garden holds. Duncan’s pavers include people who died by suicide as well as those killed by others, and the garden makes room for both.

Where Grieving Parents Find Others

Duncan’s support group, Mothers of Murdered Sons and Slain Daughters, gave the garden its name. National groups offer support to grieving parents as well. The Compassionate Friends, a nonprofit for families after the death of a child, has more than 500 chapters in all 50 states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. It offers local chapter meetings, online support, private social media groups and a directory of crisis hotlines, and its national office can be reached at 877-969-0010. The group has been doing this work for about five decades, long before Duncan’s garden took root along the path.

For people in crisis, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline can be reached by call or text at 988, or by chat online. Conversations are free and confidential, and the line answers 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Other Gardens Built From Grief

Other families have turned to gardens after a loss, too. In Florida, Sherry Williams began leaving free bouquets from her Parrish backyard garden for strangers after losing both of her parents months apart. Elsewhere, families have had to rebuild after vandals or neighbors tore apart a memorial garden.

In Bellwood, Duncan still tends the garden six mornings a week, nearly 18 years after she first asked the village for a patch of ground beside the path.

This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.

Image: Doublezout – CC BY-SA 4.0/Wikimedia Commons