When a community experiences tragedy and trauma, it’s transformed. It’s often transformed again as people join together to grieve and find a way to move forward. One Indiana town all too familiar with heartbreak is beginning this process, with students in Purdue’s landscape architecture program by their side.

In Delphi, Indiana, family members, friends and the entire community were devastated by the murder of Abigail “Abby” Williams and Liberty “Libby” German in February 2017. The girls never returned from a walk, and their bodies were soon discovered near the Monon High Bridge Trail. Nearly three years later, their killer remains at large.

Delphi needs to be known for something else, says Eric Erskin, like it was before the murders. As the grandfather of Abby Williams, he and his wife Diane find themselves in a position to lead this evolution, ensuring healing and closure don’t hinge on resolution of the criminal case.

The space at the heart of this effort is a park that pays honest and intentional tribute to the lives Liberty and Abby led. When people from around the world reached out with condolences and donations, the Erskins and Libby’s grandparents, Mike and Becky Patty, felt a pressing need to establish a memorial. Mike initiated the idea of a softball field and park complex, and set up a foundation.

The project has been a collaboration between the families ever since. “We want people to be able to come to the park and say, ‘This is a park we helped build,’” Diane Erskin says.

That idea will hold especially true for the 18 members of Purdue University’s landscape architecture junior studio class, instructed by Aaron Thompson, assistant professor of landscape architecture, as well as Professor of Horticulture Cale Bigelow. A College of Agriculture alumna introduced the Erskins to Bigelow, a turf specialist with expertise in sports turf construction and management. He has headed an effort within the college to harness resources, arrange introductions and tap alumni networks, like those who manage stadium fields, to support the park’s development, rallying turf industry experts and suggesting grant opportunities. “The nature of what I do is at the intersection of urban and rural communities, which introduces you to a lot of different areas and a lot of different people,” Bigelow says. “For this reason, I’ve been able to facilitate some introductions and get the grandparents talking to the right people.”

For the Pattys and Erskins, tapping into that expertise is key to what they’re trying to achieve. “We’re not park designers or architects or web designers,” Eric Erskin says. “We’re just a grandma and grandpa. And we only want to build this park once.”

Landscape as tribute

In fall 2018, Bigelow brought his colleague Thompson into the fold. Thompson decided it was a perfect opportunity for his junior studio class to put their newly acquired design skills to use and charged each of them with crafting a design for the Abby & Libby Memorial Park. For Thompson, the project highlighted an aspect of landscape architecture beyond the drafting board.

“At the core of landscape architecture, we spend as much time creating community as we do creating places. In this class, we spend a lot of time focused on how to read a site from an ecological standpoint, but we also try to understand it from the social landscape. We ask: ‘What are the needs of the community that will come together in that space?’ You can see how the Delphi project fits into that,” Thompson reflects.

This marked the first time students would draft a comprehensive space instead of certain facets, and also their first opportunity to incorporate the needs and visions of a client and the constraints that can impose.

“Because of the way the property is laid out, we can only have the driveway in one place and, consequently, the ballfields can only be in one spot,” Eric Erskin explains. “It was fun when I started meeting with the students and at first they were putting things all over the place. You could actually watch them realize that there only is one place they could put the ballfields, only one place they could put the driveway. That’s a real-life aha moment for them.”

In addition to ballfields, there are several other must-haves for the families, including an amphitheater, play areas, walking trails, and meeting and event spaces for local clubs. These features reflect Abby and Libby’s different passions, from their interest in music and softball to their love of nature. On top of fitting all this into the rectangular plot of land, the students’ imaginations were checked by train tracks flanking one side of the property and roadways on two other borders.

Ellen Joseph, a junior in landscape architecture, says working on the project allowed her to flex her creative muscles and cement aspects of her training. In her plan, Joseph ensured must-haves were given spots of easy accessibility and prominence but added several other features she hopes will encourage community use. She incorporated a multipurpose space that can host events from farmers markets to art fairs, a walking trail snaking through a wooded area into prairie land and a spot for a memorial statue or plaque.

“I think this park has the potential to help the community heal,” Joseph says. “There are so many people involved with this project that it’s already doing that — it’s already drawing the community closer together.”

Miles Romans, who also took the studio class, says what truly made the project challenging was working within the invisible space of a tragedy, especially one that touched the community of Delphi and the state of Indiana so deeply. It was a fresh experience, he says, but a wake-up call that landscape architects are not just working inside physical and financial boundaries but also always at the intersections of a community’s history, relationships and aspirations.

“I wanted my park to be inclusive, not just for kids, but a place that would unite the community and a destination for people from all over the state,” Romans adds. “For that reason, I didn’t create my design with a primary feature or singular focus. The memory of the girls molds the heart and spirit of the park, but physically, the park’s many connections and nodes represent the girls’ relationships with family, friends and fun.”

Final versions of each design were given to the park foundation. Thompson says the students know that no one design will be used; more likely the foundation will use the plans as inspiration to pick and choose elements they want in the new space. While students had time to work on their designs independently, the entire project was an exercise in collaboration and sharing, as they talked through different concepts and processed the idea of themselves as social engineers as well as architects.