About 50 people representing groups across the community gathered this weekend at a pocket park in southwest Rochester to unveil a symbol of peace.
The 8-foot-tall monument is one of more than 200,000 around the world. They’re all part of The Peace Pole Project, which says poles like it are in just about every nation on Earth. The first was planted in Japan in the 1970s, and the idea went international in the 1980s to honor its creator after his death.
All the poles bear the slogan “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in various languages.
It was the power of that phrase that brought Teen Empowerment, the Monroe County Sheriff's Office, the Gandhi Institute, the Indigenous Peoples Center, and Rochester Rotary Southwest together to ask for peace at home and abroad.
That’s a message that Rotary leader Karen Emerson said the world badly needs now, especially as wars rage overseas.
“We are at a very difficult time in our history where we are,” Emerson said. “We know that there are wars in Ukraine, Iran, even our own country is creating some discord, and so we are here just to say we want people to focus on our commonalities, rather than our differences.
“We have created this space of tranquility, and now we are going to say, we want this peace from this neighborhood to go out to the rest of the world,” she said.
Eleanor Coleman, who works in the city of Rochester’s Southwest Neighborhood Center, said the project reminds her of some advice from a former boss.
“(Former City Councilmember) Willie Lightfoot was my mentor. I worked for him for 17 years,” said Coleman, who is a community program planner.
She said when he was asked how to cope with challenging situations, he would say: ‘Brighten the corner where you are.’ This is my corner, and I'm brightening it.”
The monument sits in Kailee’s Community Garden at the corner of Kenwood Avenue and Kirkland Road near Genesee Street, across from the former School 29.
The park started with a bench and a Little Free Library dedicated to Kailee Kwiecien, a 9-year-old who died of cancer in 2020. Her aunt Christine, a teacher at School 29, wanted a reflective place in her memory. It wasn’t long before the park took on a life of its own, stewarded by the Rotary and several neighborhood groups and supported by grants.
