NORWALK — In Oyster Shell Park, where trucks on a recent November morning dropped crates of playground equipment as shovels hit the ground, 6-year-old Lauren Wyatt knelt and pressed her small hands mightily into a wet, gray slab of concrete.
Her handprint and the handprints of her parents, Cheyanne and Ben, were now preserved next to the words “With Love, From Allie,” which a burly retired firefighter etched minutes earlier into the base of a new flagpole.
When Lauren lifted her hands from the spot that would mark the gateway to a playground built in memory of her sister, Allison Wyatt, a crowd of adults smiled and broke into applause as tears rolled down their cheeks.
Though Lauren will never get the chance to play here with her big sister Allie, countless children for years will climb, swing and slide at this playground and 25 others like it built by selfless volunteers in cities and towns across the region that have chosen to remember the 20 first-graders and six educators slain a year ago at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Read Alaine Griffin and Josh Kovner’s full story here.