Why this park, and why here

Where the Angel of Hope began

In 1993, Richard Paul Evans wrote The Christmas Box - a short novel in which a grieving mother visits a stone angel to mourn her child. The book found readers who had lived that grief themselves, and they began writing to the author asking where the angel stood so they could visit it too.

It did not exist. So in 1994, the first Christmas Box Angel was placed in Salt Lake City, paid for by donations from families who had lost children. Since then more than a hundred Angel of Hope statues have been placed across the United States and beyond, each one supported by the community around it.

Bringing the angel to Idaho

The Eagle 616 Lions Club took on the Angel of Hope as a service project because members saw a gap in the Treasure Valley: there was no shared, public place set aside for families to remember a child who had died.

Funeral services end. Sympathy cards stop arriving. But birthdays keep coming, and so do anniversaries, holidays, and ordinary days when the missing is loud. Families needed somewhere to go on those days - a place that belongs to everyone and is open to all.

Dry Creek Cemetery

Dry Creek Cemetery in Boise was chosen as the home for the Idaho angel. It is a peaceful, well-tended setting, easy to reach from across the valley, and already a place where families come to remember.

The remembrance park will hold the angel statue, memorial bricks set into the walkway, a memorial wall for engraved plaques, sponsored benches, and a quiet gathering area for vigils and small ceremonies.

The families who inspired it

This project exists because local families said it should. Parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends have given their time, their money, and their own stories to make it real.

Some of those stories are shared on this website, with the families’ permission. They are the reason the park is being built, and they are the best explanation of what it is for.