Buckeye educator killed in crash to be honored with ‘reading garden’
NEW PHILADELPHIA (WJER) (Nov. 13, 2024) – Buckeye Career Center students are putting their skills to use memorializing the staff member who died a year ago Thursday in the Tusky Valley charter bus crash.
Superintendent Bob Alsept says work is underway on an outdoor patio area they’re calling “The Shannon Wigfield Memorial Reading Garden” in honor of the longtime English and Language Arts instructor.
“In talking to her husband Rick last year, he said, ‘You know, Shannon loves kind of the porch swings and the glider types,’ so we’re gonna make sure that one of those will be built in our Construction Lab, and that will be handing there but it will be a nice area for students and adults alike just to remember Shannon and her impact.”
CAD students designed the space that’s being built next to the basketball courts by the teens in Buckeye’s Landscaping and Construction Management programs.
“It’s a wonderful project but it’s even more special because the idea and the motivation came from her friends and students and it’s being built by current students and that doesn’t happen everywhere. We’re very fortunate to do that.”
The career center received financial support for the project from Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, who visited the career center after the crash to pay his respects.
“And shortly after that we received a check from he and his wife that said, ‘Please do something as a memorial for Shannon and you decide what it is and here’s seed money for that.'”
Wigfield was one of three adults killed in the fiery chain reaction collision on I-70 in Licking County that also claimed the lives of three Tusky Valley band members. There’s a 6-hour memorial walk or run in their honor at the stadium Sunday beginning at noon. Blood donations will also be accepted at the event from noon to 3:30.