When Center Grove Community Schools presented its newest monument, a steel tree with the names of students and staff who passed away on its leaves, one parent felt a new sense of peace.
Joyce Genneken’s son, Tyler, died in 2009 of leukemia when he was in eighth grade at Middle School Central. During the 10 years that followed, she actively supported initiatives such as Camp Little Red Door Cancer Agency and Be the Match, an initiative that tries to get bone marrow donations for leukemia patients who need them to survive. Tyler never got that match, but through her efforts, Genneken got 24 people to donate their bone marrow over the course of the decade since his death, she said.
Despite her efforts, Genneken had a gnawing fear that people would forget Tyler. Now, she knows they won’t, she said.
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“He was very humble and he fought a very good fight,” Genneken said. “As a parent your biggest fear is that they’ll be forgotten and that’s very heartbreaking. To have someone build something like this, it’s breathtaking.”
That someone was Richie Arkanoff II, who needed to complete a project to attain the rank of Eagle Scout as part of the Boy Scouts organization. Although he thought of the idea of a memorial tree when he was 11 years old, he didn’t flesh out the details until his freshman year at Center Grove High School, when he made a formal presentation to the school board for approval, he said.
The board approved the project, and now Tyler Genneken’s name, along with the names of 58 other students and staff members who died while attending or working at Center Grove schools are displayed on the leaves of the tree, according to school officials.
On Thursday, the steel tree was unveiled to the public in a memorial dedication outside the Center Grove administration building. About 50 people attended the dedication, many of whom had financially supported the project, giving a collective $3,170 to Arkanoff. Indianapolis-based Warner Steel donated most of the steel needed for the tree, while Indianapolis-based construction company Sub-Surface of Indiana donated the concrete that Arkanoff used to form the walkway leading to the memorial. The memorial has a value of more than $10,000, Arkanoff said.
Students at Central Nine Career Center welded the rust-colored steel that sandwiches the perforated silver steel of the tree, while Natural Stone Creations water-cut the steel that forms the tree. Tiffany Lawn and Garden provided the stone that forms the benches facing the memorial at a 50 percent discount, along with landscaping. Arkanoff and 39 other scouts contributed 120 working hours to the project, digging out the ground for the foundation of the memorial, laying down wood to mark the perimeter of the concrete walkway and laying down the cement, he said.
Indianapolis-based architectural firm Lancer and Beebe helped design the project free of charge, spokesperson Stacy Conrad said.
Arkanoff himself spent about 500 hours over two years on the project, including planning, reaching out to contractors, collecting donations and presenting the project plan to various community organizations, he said.
“I wanted to have something sustainable and to have almost literally a concrete impact on the community,” Arkanoff said. “I wanted to have something that would mean a lot to a lot of people. Even just now as I was talking to different individuals, there were a lot of parents. Their students passed away and they came up to me and congratulated me on how meaningful it was to them and how beautiful a memorial it was. It’s touching to me and moving to see the impact on the community.”
The memorial is a source of pride for Superintendent Rich Arkanoff, not just because of its meaning to the district, but because his son was the one behind it, he said.
“I’m just a little proud,” Rich Arkanoff said. “It’s been a great journey, doing this since 2017; he’s been working on it.”
