BUFFALO, NY (WKBW) — We are remembering a beloved member of Buffalo’s East Side community, Gail Wells, who recently passed away and founded Freedom Gardens in Buffalo, helping to plant flower and vegetable gardens in the city to improve lives.
7 News Senior Reporter Eileen Buckley is bringing the voices of some of her family members, who reflect on her life's beautification work and her legacy as a family matriarch.
“Auntie Gail was just full of life,” reflected Shola Clark, niece.
"She spoke life into people,” remarked Allen Redmond, cousin,
Loved ones are remembering Gail as a woman full of love for her community.
Her niece, Shola Clark, managing editor of the Challenger Newspaper, tells me Gail was a “mother to the community”.
"She's really focused on our community just because of the things that we suffer in the community as far as economically, nutritionally, you know, food deserts,” Clark noted. “She was fighting for those things -- to come away from those disparities. To recognize that there are disparities in our community, which a lot of us don't understand, so she was really trying to advocate.”
Gail, who suffered a stroke in late May and later died, was a teacher and urban planner, but it was through gardening that she “sowed” her advocacy in our Queen City. A founder of Freedom Gardens she was also a long long-time Grassroots Gardener.
"She had planted or went around the community offering seeds and beds for people to put in their gardens in their yards to grow flowers to grow food, to just give people inspiration,” Clark explained.
"She was a master gardener, and I’ll use that analogy, as how she worked in people, through people, for people. She was always of service. She wanted the best for everybody,” described Redmond.
Redmond is from New York City and is Gail’s second cousin.
“In my family, she's like the soul example of education and development, just unifying others,” said Redmond.
"How will you always remember her legacy?” Buckley asked. “I will remember her as a beacon of light. A person who gave of herself to the world and to her family,” responded Redmond.
“She was embracing. She was encouraging, always just up trying to uplift people,” replied Clark. “The seeds that she planted in a community and the things that she wanted to see happen within our community.”
I asked Clark what her favorite memory is of her aunt.
“My favorite memory of my aunt is dancing. I will always remember my aunt as dancing and just being alive and every moment,” Clark recalled.
Redmond tells me he spent a lot of time with his cousin.
“I spent summers in Buffalo here with her. I went to the University at Buffalo because of her. We were just together for Thanksgiving, and we spoke a lot,” Redmond remarked.
Redmond told me his Gail was always helping others and served as an “inspiration”.
I asked Redmond how he wants all of us in Buffalo to remember Gail.
“Continue to plant seeds, not only literally, but spiritually. through people, continue to build each other and love each other because that's who she was,” Redmond replied.
Her niece tells me that on the day her aunt suffered a stroke, that morning, she had told her husband she was coming here to JFK Park, off Hickory Street in Buffalo, to water fruit trees that she had planted.
“And that was her plan that morning to go down there until, you know, God called her home,” declared Clark.
There is now an incredible sign of Gail’s care for those trees — an apple is now blooming.
