'Motivated to honour him'

A Summerland family is working to restore a local baseball field to its former glory, in memory of their son who passed away earlier this year.

Husband and Wife fundraising team, Jeff and Melissa Taylor, launched a GoFundMe campaign for Living Memorial Park on Tuesday, hoping to bring life back to Living Memorial Park.

Their son, Hendriks Jon Taylor, passed away this summer at the age of 16. Hendriks had lived with a brain tumour and ultimately took his own life.

“It's been such an incredible loss. This idea came to us probably the second day after he had passed, that we just needed to do something to keep his memory alive and to give back to this community that's been so good to us and was so good to him,” Melissa said.

“We're really motivated to honour him by redoing these fields.”

The family shared that Hendriks often had a hard time fitting in, but not on the baseball field.

“We had the opportunity to play with Summerland Minor Baseball Association for the past two seasons. We were very grateful, because he did have a number of health challenges, and he was allowed to play down an age level, to be coached by his dad and to play alongside his younger brother,” Melissa added.

Jeff said baseball for Hendriks felt like a second home.

“It's a very welcoming place, very welcoming sport. It's an accessible sport, a sport that kids can join later on and be a part of a team,” he added.

“It's about him, but it's about the community, and it's about the original meaning behind this field, which is Living Memorial Park. It's intended to be a living, ongoing memorial to those in our community that we've lost through military service, but just that we've lost in general.”

To honour their middle son, the parents are looking to rename "Field 2" to Field 96, named after Hendriks' jersey number, but otherwise keep the name Living Memorial Park.

“These fields were built once our soldiers came back from the Second World War in the mid-40s. They were built around 1947 to 1948 and they were pretty grand at the time. They had beautiful grandstands, they had washrooms, and they had lots of modern features of the day,” Jeff said.

“As time has gone on, as budgets have tightened, the fields have kind of gotten forgotten, and they've kind of fallen into a bit of a state of disrepair.”

As Jeff is the baseball coach for the Summerland Association and Melissa works as the fundraiser coordinator, the family has seen growth in the local baseball community.

“Baseball is so popular, especially amongst the U9 and U11 levels, we're really seeing a resurgence in baseball popularity,” Jeff said.

“So our objective is to restore these fields to a place where the kids can be proud to play on these fields. Where we can host tournaments…where we can have multiple teams practicing and playing at the same time, where we give kids the facilities like batting cages and things like that that will help them advance in their baseball careers.”

Their fundraiser, which has a goal of $750,000, would go towards adding new lighting, grandstands, batting cages, redoing the field, adding new fencing, and new bases and upgrading the bathrooms which have fallen into disrepair.

“We would really love to see a little concession stand that can be run by volunteers at tournaments. And it's just something that makes the field so much more welcoming for guests, for fans and for the kids themselves,” Melissa added.

In 48 hours, the team has managed to raise $40,000.

“There's a lot of names that we don't even know who they are. So it's telling me that this is grassroots, that the community is coming on board with us for this project. And it's really, it's really exciting to see that,” Melissa said.

Since they don’t expect the money to be all crowd-funded like the original was back in the day, the Taylors have also applied for the Toronto Blue Jays Field Of Dreams grant, which provides funding to design, refurbish and build local baseball diamonds in communities across the country.

They will find out in mid-December about their application.

“We'll be looking at a variety of other grants, and we're also hoping to get some government funding to support this project as well,” Melissa said.

“We would love to get through the spring season of baseball and then start to see some changes beginning to happen through the summer and fall of 2025 and that it would be completed by 2026 for opening day.”

Jeff added that while it would be great to have all the money in place at once, they will be doing what they can with the money available, and just building on that as they go forward.”

“If you're able to contribute, great. If you can't contribute, spread the word. Provide us with contacts and leads and spread the message amongst your peers,” he said. “We would love to see the community come together and this to be a community-based project.”

“We know there are lots of needs out there, we don't want to take away from other agencies that also are in need. But if somebody is looking for something a little bit different to do with their money, through their company, this would be a great project for them to invest in,” Melissa added.

To donate or find out more on the Field 96 Hendriks Jon Taylor Legacy Project, head to the GoFundMe page here.