A campaign for `Rachel's Park'

How to help

Donations for the park project may be dropped off at any Washington Mutual branch or mailed to The Pearson Children's Park Fund, Washington Mutual Queen Anne Branch, 1417 Queen Anne Ave. N., Seattle, 98109.

For project information, write to The Friends of Rachel's Park, 2212 Queen Anne Ave. N., P.O. Box 719, Seattle, 98109 or call Stephanie Bower at 206-284-5111.

A bright-red plastic swing tied with a yellow rope to the blossoming branches of a backyard cherry tree.

A little girl's pale pink jacket hanging in a closet, its silver zipper catching the light.

A white-plastic gardening bucket with a smiley face and the name of the girl's mother - Sarah - written in black marker.

All three objects belonged to members of the Pearson family, who died in the Jan. 31 crash of Alaska Airlines Flight 261 along with another family - the Clemetsons - from Seattle's Queen Anne neighborhood.

All three items bring happiness and sadness to the Pearsons' friends and neighbors who now own them: Young boys down the street now play on the swing that once belonged to 6-year-old Rachel Pearson and her sister, Grace, who was 22 months old. Four-year-old Katie Baker will soon fit into her best friend Rachel's hooded pink coat. And when Stephanie Bower, 41, holds the gardening bucket's metal handle, she thinks of her friend Sarah Pearson, of her smiles, her famous margaritas and her impromptu parties with husband Rod Pearson strumming his guitar on the porch.

"They were just amazing people and always so generous with everything," said Bower.

Though many of the Pearsons' belongings were distributed in the neighborhood as mementos of a beloved family, many friends and neighbors felt a need for a permanent place to remember both families who perished.

They have joined to create a memorial in a little city park, at West Wheeler Street and 11th Avenue West, just a couple of blocks from the Pearsons' home on Ninth Avenue West, where the two Pearson girls and the four Clemetson kids, Cori, Blake, Miles and Spencer, liked to play.

Dr. David Clemetson, his wife, Carolyn, and the four children died in the crash.

"There were a lot of kids that had to deal with this, and there's no place yet to go to put flowers, to reflect and remember," said Mari Ingram, whose daughter, Maddy Fowler, 7, was best friends with Blake and Cori Clemetson and Rachel Pearson. "I think having a place is important."

Whether it's a large rock with the names of the six children and four adults etched on a plaque, or bronze shoe prints of the children memorialized in the Soundview Terrace Park sidewalk, the Queen Anne neighborhood is determined that their friends will not be forgotten.

Ingram said her daughter will not forget the comfort Blake and Cori gave her through weekly chemotherapy treatments for a rare muscular disease. How they'd play word games or the day Cori gave her new Game Boy to Maddy just to make her happy.

"This is such a perfect spot because it's about the sky and water and it was so close and they really did play here," said Bower, volunteer coordinator for the memorial project.

The goal is to clean up the 0.3-acre park, replace the hawthorn trees that sprout 2-inch-long thorns, build a wall or fence between a steep slope and a residential street, build the memorial, and later rename the park "Rachel's Park," which the girl and her family always called it.

Though $25,000 has been raised, the project is on hold until the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department replaces an old chain-and-wood play structure, which central-division director Herbye White says will cost about $200,000.

Since the replacement is not a high-priority project of the department, White said the community should apply for matching grants and other financial aid. However, he told Bower he would tour the park next week and decide how its needs rate.

The delay is frustrating for Bower and others involved in the project, including Rod Pearson's father, Ralph Pearson, 70.

Ralph Pearson is grateful to those who have shown support for the park, such as Claudia Case, the real-estate broker who sold his son's home on Ninth Avenue West and donated her $13,000 commission, and Chicago Title, which donated its fee of nearly $1,000 to the project.

"It takes a certain kind of person to donate what she did," Pearson said of Case.

Case also urged Windemere Real Estate employees to do cleanup and planting at the park June 16.

Though Claire Barnett, David Clemetson's former wife and the mother of Blake and Cori, is still too devastated to work directly for the memorial, Ingram said she is very supportive of the idea.

"Maybe knowing how much her children were loved will help her heal," Ingram said.

Bower said that when the memorial becomes a reality, it will be a bittersweet moment: happy, because it's a way to honor and remember their friends, and sad because they are no longer here to play on the little red swing, don the pink coat, and carry the white gardening bucket through the front yard.