Hundreds of tombstones fill Liberty City park in honor of those lost to COVID-19

Five hundred plastic tombstones filled a Liberty City park Wednesday, showing only a fraction of the lives taken in Miami-Dade from COVID-19.

“We chose Liberty City for the memorial cemetery because this pandemic has also exposed inequities that make black people and other people of color more vulnerable to COVID-19, many of whom are frontline workers who do not have the luxury of working from home,” said Congresswoman Frederica Wilson at a solemn morning ceremony Wednesday.

Wilson, who partnered with the Circle of Brotherhood, Miami-Dade County Commission Chairwoman Audrey Edmonson and other local elected officials, said the memorial — located at Simonhoff Park, 1850 NW 54th St. — was a way for the community to “collectively grieve.” She said her office has been flooded with calls from people who have lost family members.

“In many cases, they were unable to provide them comfort at their hospital bedsides or say a proper goodbye before they passed or when laid to rest,” Wilson said.

In Florida, there have been 741,632 coronavirus cases as of Wednesday. The death toll stood at 15,595. Miami-Dade County has 176,271 confirmed cases and 3,485 deaths, according to Miami-Dade County’s “New Normal” Dashboard.

For Eric Pitts, 47, the memorial was a stark reminder of the toll the deadly disease has taken on his family. His mother, father and older brother died, while he and another brother survived.

Pitts, who lives in downtown Miami, said that writing the names of his mother, father and older brother on the tombstones “was like medicine” for him.

“Today was a big deal,” he said. “It shows that someone cares.”

This story was originally published October 14, 2020 at 8:34 PM.