Soo Line: Located in the poignant Angel Park, Girl Scouts build wind phone to help others air their grief

By Soo Greiman  

Most everyone appreciates hearing how Girl Scouts across the country take part in  meaningful community service projects — cleaning parks, planting trees, promoting voting and  more. But when one local group of Girl Scouts wanted to help others in a thoughtful way, they  developed a remarkable idea and brought it to life.  

They built a wind phone.  

Today, in Evansdale’s Angel Park, stands a small phone booth-like structure. But it isn’t  connected to anything — except the wind.  

For those unfamiliar with the concept, a wind phone is a disconnected phone placed in  a quiet setting. It offers a compassionate space where people grieving the loss of a loved one  can speak aloud the words they may have left unsaid.  

Cadette Girl Scout Troop 2607, made up of girls from the Waterloo/Hudson area, came  up with the idea after learning about the concept.  

As the troop and their leader explained, the original “Telephone of the Wind” was  created in December 2010 by Japanese garden designer Itaru Sasaki. After losing a cousin, he  found comfort in speaking into an unconnected phone in his garden — talking to the wind as a  way to process his grief.  

Following the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan, Sasaki opened his garden to others.  Thousands of grieving visitors came each year, and the idea soon inspired wind phones around  the world.  

For Troop 2607, turning the concept into reality took three years of dedication,  teamwork and new skills.  

The troop includes Larissa Schneider, Evelyn Perry and Caragin Conley of Waterloo,  along with Ava McCormick of Hudson. They were guided by their leader, Heather Schneider,  with additional help from Dan Perry, Evelyn’s father, who provided workspace and support.  

“We are all Cadette Scouts, and this was our Silver Award project, so we took time to  do lots of research and planning,” Evelyn explained. “My dad, who is a UNI professor, got us a  tour of the sculpture lab. That’s where we saw equipment we would need to build the kind of  phone booth we wanted.”  

Evelyn and her father also created a small laser-cut model before construction began.  Later, Larissa noted the group purchased materials at Menards, using money earned  through years of selling Girl Scout cookies.  

Each troop member, Caragin added, contributed at least 50 hours to the project. “We  started it in fifth grade, and now we’re in eighth grade, even though we all go to different  schools.”  

The group knew Angel Park in Evansdale would be the perfect setting. 

Located near Meyers Lake, the park serves as a memorial to cousins Elizabeth Collins,  8, and Lyric Cook, 10, who were murdered in July 2012. Other victims memorialized there  include Lindsay Nichols, Donisha Hill and Evelyn Miller.  

When the Evansdale Parks and Recreation Board was approached, members approved  the idea. Among them was Tom Nichols, whose daughter Lindsay died in 2012. The Elizabeth  Collins Foundation later poured the concrete base for the structure.  

“When we delivered the booth to the park last year on Nov. 18, it was very cold — we  were freezing,” Evelyn said. “But we got it off the trailer. At first, people didn’t know what it  was, but now that they do, we’ve heard it gets visited a lot.”  

Caragin’s mother, Kristen Conley, knows firsthand how meaningful the wind phone can  be. After losing her husband, Tim Conley, in September 2022, she found comfort in the  concept.  

“Like many widows, after Tim died, I was looking for places that felt comforting, and I found that in the wind phone,” she said. “The fact that it’s in a natural setting is meaningful. It  gives people another outlet for grief.”  

The troop shared that the wind phone will be formally dedicated in the coming weeks, once a small library containing grief resources is installed nearby.  

“We hope it’s used by people who have lost someone,” Larissa Schneider said, “and that it helps them.”