COTTAGE GROVE — Joetta Smith will never forget the day she lost her daughter and all her grandchildren.
On May 23, 2006, Nancy Jeneane Smith Wooden, 28, was traveling around a rain-slicked curve on Shoreview Road near Dorena Lake with her three daughters.
She lost control, and the tail end of her Honda Accord jutted into oncoming traffic. There, it was pounded by an Umpqua National Forest dump truck.
Dead on the scene were Nancy and 9-year-old Rebecca and 6-year-old McKenna. Faith, 3, died soon after at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene. Nancy and Faith were buried in one coffin and Rebecca and McKenna, fast friends in life, were buried in another.
Smith,54, and other members of Our Lady of Perpetual Help Parish here are doing something to cope and bring goodness out of tragedy.
The parish will dedicate a rosary garden Sunday after the 10:30 a.m. Mass. Much of the funding for the project came from donations to the Smith family after the 2006 accident. Upon hearing about the tragedy, donors sent money, most from Cottage Grove, but also from all over the country.
People told the Smiths to go to Hawaii with the cash. Instead, they used a portion to construct a memorial gazebo in front of their house. Decoration for the structure includes the eight-inch tall angels that were on the coffins of her daughter and granddaughters. Her husband, Kent, visits the gazebo every Sunday.
The family, paying homage to Nancy’s chosen profession, also began a scholarship for a female paramedic.
Last, since Nancy was a devotee of the rosary, Joetta decided that a rosary garden would be fitting. “It’s what she would have wanted,” Joetta explains. Nancy, a single mother, had taught her children to pray the rosary young. “She always said there is something good in everything bad.”
Parishioners have contributed to the garden, too, buying paver bricks and benches. The rosary path is marked with cobalt blue glass shaped like foot-wide beads, pieces made at the St. Vincent de Paul glass factory. Shrubs and gracefully curved beds now cover the area, which was once an awkward patch between the church and parish center. A wooden bell tower and bell that had been in storage has been brought out and revamped for the project. The garden has already gotten some use.
A group that prays the rosary each Friday morning has convened there the past few weeks. At the start of May, children gathered there for a Marian coronation ceremony.
Joetta admits that she sometimes feels angry, especially when she hears about women giving up their children in abortion. Her babies were taken from her against her wishes.
“Some days are better than others,” Joetta says of the grieving process. “Some days are really bad. But I realize my daughter and my granddaughters are in total peace with the Lord. Isn’t that our goal?”
Servite Father Steve Ryan, pastor of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, still seems to miss Nancy and her daughters, who were active in the parish. Nancy had become a counselor for women in difficult marriages.
“She had a way of relating to them,” says the priest.
And now, Father Ryan says, the garden inspired by Nancy is benefitting the community.
“It’s drawn the parish together in a united project,” the priest explains. “There is planting and landscaping. People are putting in many work hours. It has become a parish project.”
For Joetta, the garden is a labor of love. She has been a major organizer and worker.
Children remain in her life. She runs a home daycare and teaches religious education at church. She has other adult children and soon will have a grandchild again. Her son’s wife is expecting her first in Spokane.
Go to olphcg.net online to see more about the garden.
