Four County Community Foundation

Hana St. Juliana Memorial Fund

In November 2022, the Hana St. Juliana Memorial Fund was founded with Four County Community Foundation by the teen’s family. One of the fund’s first projects will be the creation of Hana’s Garden, a space designed to honor Hana and three other teens who died in a November 2021 shooting at Oxford High School. A groundbreaking ceremony will be held on Sunday, August 6, 2023, at Seymour Lake Township Park in Oxford Township.

“The purpose of Hana’s Garden is to have a place for the community to remember the four students lost. We don’t want them or what happened to them to be forgotten,” said Steve St. Juliana, Hana’s father.

He said the garden will be divided into four sections, one for each of the teens. Family members have been asked for ideas to incorporate into those garden sections that reminds them of their loved one. The other victims include Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre and Justin Shilling.

The garden’s initial concept was created by Chris Nordstrom of Ann Arbor-based Carlisle Wortman Associates who donated his time and talents toward the project. The plan calls for a central plaza with four pergolas, benches and a four-sided sculpture that honors the teens, plus a water feature, boardwalk, rain garden and walkways.

Detroit-based Smith Group, a world-renowned architectural firm, will donate their services to create the garden’s final drawings and Heritage and Company, a landscape construction firm located in Oxford, will oversee and coordinate the project.

More information about the garden, including renderings of the space, can be found at https://hanamemorialfund.com/.

Steve St. Juliana said that their original plan was to create a memorial for Hana on a smaller scale but the success of an April 2022 fundraiser in Lake Orion prompted them to consider this larger project.

The Hana St. Juliana Memorial Fund’s intent is to remember and celebrate the lives of the Oxford High School shooting victims and support initiatives that can prevent a similar tragedy in the future. Donations to the fund will be directed towards immediate projects, including the garden. Once those initial projects are completed, any remaining funds will go into an endowment for the purpose of maintaining the garden and facilitating healing and prevention programs.