Posted on 04/16/2019 12:21:32 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd
PALM BAY, Fla. - A family is fighting to keep a memorial built to remember a teenager who died in a car accident in place.
Zach Caufield's grandparents stand where the teenager's family placed a roadside cross at the scene of his accident.
On the night of Jan. 1, the 19-year-old drove off Hoffer Avenue crashing into the Melbourne Tillman Canal system.
His family believes the Heritage High School graduate failed to judge the turn in the road due to darkness and poor lighting and signage.
"He was just an all-around good kid. He had a hug for everybody," Frank Caufield, Zach's grandfather, said.
Friends and neighbors in Palm Bay also contributed to building the memorial which includes a large cross, photographs and ornaments like a fishing rod and Florida Gators sign.
"It just brings us comfort. You know, talk to Zach and talk to God and do what we need to do," Caufield said about his grandson's memorial.
Now, there's an emotional outpouring from a different side Albert Messenger who lives in the neighborhood calls the memorial an eyesore.
"They can grieve, but you know we have cemeteries for that," Messenger said.
The water control district took Messenger's complaint and now authorities are giving the Caufield's one month to take it down.
More than 500 people have signed petitions in support of keeping the memorial standing.
"Apparently, he hasn't suffered as families have suffered," Caufield said in response to Messenger.
"There's no way to explain the pain families feel with that, none at all."
Messenger said he believes there are also people who feel how he does.
"I could probably get a petition going also. I'm not going to waste my time with it," Messenger said. "I just don't see the need to have something like that there," he said.
The family plans to meet with the canal authorities at a board meeting Tuesday, April 23, to discuss their options.
None of that should be on the roadway. It’s a distraction to other drivers and may cause another fatal wreck. That stuff also blows into the road causing cars to swerve.
Who cares other than assholes. Let em have grief especially if the kid lived in that area it wont be there forever.
I’ve never really understood why they must be at the scene of the death. Why not create a memorial in your home, yard, cemetery that you can visit, decorate as you please, etc if that is what you desire? I feel bad for his family, they are obviously grieving but their grief is misplaced.
I lived in Palm Bay, FL back in the 80s.
I regularly pass one of these close to a major highway. It not only features a cross but a Confederate flag. I’m surprised it hasn’t been taken down yet.
I’m almost certain that would be against the law. But I can imagine two winos with a bottle under the coat, paying their respects.
Around here, people put their dead relatives’ names (and pets) on their car. I guess that is an Appalachian thing.
More or less than your frigen cell phone stuck to your head ???
Me to nothing there...Looks like it has grown big time
Those crosses can be seen on every farm road, county road, and state highway out here-without the chairs. I don’t have a problem with it and I don’t know anyone who does-but this is a rural area where people live on acreage with livestock, not a neighborhood or ‘burb, so I’m probably comparing apples to oranges...
I’ve noticed that Florida is way different from other southern and southwestern states when it comes to property issues, too...
It’s public land. The family has no right to convert it to private use. Do your mourning at tbe gravesite.
Around here, they tend to get smaller over time.
A recent one is several fluorescent vests and a cross hanging on a fence where a construction worker got hit when a semi driver didn’t see one of those HUGE flashing arrows
In a year or two, it will be a simple cross
celebrate his life, not where he ended...
donate to his school and name a field where children play after him... not a ditch somewhere in some guy’s MIL’s neighborhood.
They are put up because of a couple of things:
1. There is a complete lack of religion these days. The church and family used to be where people would mourn. Those don’t generally exist for the people.
2. There is also such an influence of social media that these memorials become snowballs. They become “the thing” to do. They are as shallow as “thoughts and prayers” statements.
It kind of sad that the memory of these people will be washed away in a couple spring rain storms.
Around here, people put their dead relatives’ names (and pets) on their car. I guess that is an Appalachian thing.
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We see that here in Texas. It’s a Mexican thing.
OK, I’ll bite, since this is something I’ve had an opinion on for years.
First off, I cannot imagine the pain that the parents who lost a child - for any reason - must go through. I do NOT fault them for wanting to remember that child, or to find a way to deal with that loss.
Having said that, I have found public expressions of purely private grief - which this is (as are those offensive stickers giving the name of a person and DOB-DOD that you see on the back windows of trucks and vans all the time) - to be terribly inappropriate.
What they tell me is that people in our society have simply lost the ability to recognize the boundaries between things that are profoundly private - and should be kept that way - and things that are OK to express in public.
The people who don’t know how to recognize those boundaries have been diminished, in some way, by not knowing that, or by not being raised to understand it.
So we are all, in a way, less civilized as a result. Its like your plumber whom you just called on the phone, or a kid at McDonalds who just asked you for your name, calling you by your first name. When one prospective future son-in-law did that to me, I ripped him a new one on the spot. I am gentler with the ignorant kids at McDonalds, but this sort of FAKE easy informality is probably THE most annoying thing about modern America that I encounter on a daily basis.
To get back to the subject, I think roadside cross/memorial displays like this are not appropriate.
How much to bet that this is a liberal, busy-body, up-in-everybody-elses-business P.O.S.?
A bit much. I can see some kind of marker that might remind others to take care but this memorial is distracting and tacky, frankly. And as it deteriorates over time, it seems another loss for the family. Better a tasteful, discrete marker which doesn’t interfere with traffic or road maintenance, if anything at all. I favor the cemetery and home memorials myself.
Isn’t this what GRAVES are for? I hate these makeshift curb memorials.
They do it where I live. It is allowed to stay up for a year, then is removed.
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