BUFFALO, N.Y. (WKBW) — Sunflowers blooming on Jefferson Avenue as a living memorial for the ten Black lives killed on May 14th of last year.
You can find fields of bright sunflowers standing nice and tall across from Tops Friendly Markets adjacent to Jefferson Avenue and Riley Street.
It was all done by the director of Buffalo Reuse Michael Gianer who tells 7 News reporter Yoselin Person the sunflowers is a symbol of growth.
“Just like we put in effort and put in time and investment into growing these flowers,” Gainer says. “We want to see the same thing from the community and from the city and the business world that this place and community matters.”
Grady Lewis is a survivor of the May 14th racist mass shooting who spoke to the shooter the day before.
He says he feels more needs to be done to help his community.
“You've seen what we’ve gotten this is just us that mural over there these flowers is the people that live in this community doing something and we’re not getting any help and it’s sad to me. It’s sad to me,” he says.
Gainer also says more needs to be invested into the Jefferson Avenue community.
“A lot of the evidence that we’ve seen are the small things that we’re all doing on a daily basis planting flowers, setting up new businesses,” he says. “There’s a lot of vacant land here and it kind of could be very sad and this was one way we could put energy back into.”
Yet the tall sunflowers are attracting not only the bees, but putting smiles to people’s faces that live in the Cold Springs neighborhood.
“Sunflowers. We need more sun to the neighborhood, make it brighter and the hearts,” says Priscilla Geter, a Cold Springs resident. “Not only for the shooting, but for everything else that’s going around here.”
Buffalo Reuse plans to expand and add more sunflowers next spring once the sunflowers die.
