By KEVIN DENNEHY
STAFF WRITER
BOURNE - In a handsome new brick and stone memorial garden, Mary Fuller yesterday lowered her head to read the names inscribed on the granite markers.

Melissa Ellis, a senior at Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School, levels the ground where a plaque will be inserted at a memorial for 22 youths who died while students in Bourne schools. Upper Cape masonry students laid the brick pathway, installed granite benches and crafted a slate wall around a boulder monument. (Staff photo by MATT SUESS)

Amid a bulb-shaped path, 22 stones commemorate 22 Bourne youths, each of whom died while a student in the town schools.

Fuller, a retired Lyle Middle School principal who spent more than three decades in Bourne schools, recalled many of the names.

There was a child who was killed on the way to dance class. A teen who died just hours after her last day of school senior year. One student who actually returned to the high school after serving in World War II.

And she recalled the sad stories attached to those names, of lives snuffed out too soon.

So their names won't be forgotten, the town paid for the memorial behind Bourne High School. At the head of the garden is a 3-ton stone monument, engraved with the words, "You Are Ever a Part of Our Lives."

The project was born out of the request of a Bourne father who wanted to have the town's new middle school named in honor of his late son, Billy McKernan, who died of injuries in a Plymouth crash two years ago.

While the school committee chose not to name the school after Billy, they agreed his memory would be more appropriately marked in a memorial honoring all students who died while they were students in Bourne schools.

Town meeting voters approved construction of a monument in the spring, allocating $30,000 for the project, and school officials offered a wooded area adjacent to the high school and middle school.

"It's really a great thing, and it's about time that something like this came to fruition," said John McKernan, a Bourne barber who today will mark the second anniversary of the death of his son, Billy, by purchasing a computer for Bourne High School.

His son would be in the second month of his junior year.

"A remembrance of someone will never die," said the father, who has already stopped by the memorial park several times.

In recent weeks, 24 masonry students from Upper Cape Cod Regional Technical School laid the brick pathway, installed granite benches and crafted a slate wall around the boulder monument.

"They felt a sense of pride in their work because of the type of project it was," said Bob Fleurent, a masonry instructor at the technical school. "They really felt a connection to it."

Last week, Bourne High students planted 1,600 daffodil bulbs, which town officials hope will bloom for the park's spring dedication.

The committee that organized the project visited similar monuments in other towns, including Sandwich and Yarmouth.

Since designing the park, they've received help from throughout the community.

The Department of Public Works cleared the site, and trucked the 3-ton boulder from the town landfill. And students from the vocational school have spent much of their time over the last month crafting the memorial.

"This has really become a community project," said Fuller, who served on the committee

"We hope the high school will hold memorial services to keep kids involved in this project.

"And we just hope we don't have to put down any more names."