The Alaysha Williams Memorial Traffic Garden officially opened on Wednesday at Ed White High School, nearly two years after the 17-year-old was killed.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The Alaysha Williams Memorial Traffic Garden officially debuted Wednesday morning at Ed White High School, and the person who felt it most was the one who cut the ribbon.
Alaysha’s mother, Tiereny Williams, walked through the garden for the first time just before the ceremony began, she saw her daughter’s face painted in the center of it. Tiereny then stepped up, grabbed the scissors, and made it official.
“What mainly stuck out is my daughter’s picture in the middle of it,” Tiereny said. “Her name. Remembering her.”
The Ed White community showed up in force on Wednesday morning. The school drumline played. School leaders spoke. And for a moment, the parking lot that used to be just a parking lot became something else entirely.
Local artist David Nakashi spent six days painting the garden by hand – crosswalks, stop signs, bike lanes, traffic signals, all rendered to scale so students can physically practice navigating the road before they ever have to do it in real traffic. He said jobs like this one don’t come around often.
“Sometimes you just get these jobs that are more meaningful,” Nakashi said. “To be able to do them and add to the community, it makes something that really wasn’t very attractive into something that’s activated. That’s pretty invaluable.”
Alaysha was 17 when three drivers struck her on Blanding Boulevard in September 2024. She was a flag football player and a starter on the Ed White girls basketball team, the kind of person, her mother said, who would have had exactly one reaction to seeing this garden.
“Mom, I’m a superstar,” Tiereny said, channeling her daughter. “I told you I was famous. They want me everywhere.”
The garden is part of Jacksonville’s Blue Zones Project, which city officials say has helped drive down bike and pedestrian deaths by more than 25 percent since 2022. But Tiereny Williams wasn’t thinking about percentages Wednesday morning. She was thinking about other mothers.
“Just trying to keep other kids safe,” she said, “so parents wouldn’t have to go through the stuff that I’ve been through this past year and a half.”
The garden is open to the public, not just Ed White students. Families can visit on weekends and after school hours to practice bike and pedestrian safety together.
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