The Wind Phone on Hole 11.

Shortly after Oliver died in 2021, I learned about the concept of a wind phone, and it resonated so deeply that I immediately sought to create one in our own community.

Itaru Sasaki, a Japanese garden designer, created the first wind phone (translated from Kaze No Denwa, “Telephone of the Wind”) in 2010 after the death of his beloved cousin from cancer. Sasaki placed a white vintage phone booth in his private garden. The phone booth has a non-working rotary phone at its center. Sasaki continued to connect with his cousin by picking up the receiver and letting his words be carried by the wind.

The following year, a 9.1-magnitude earthquake caused a tsunami off the northeast coast of Japan’s main island, and thousands of people were never recovered. More than 450,000 people lost their homes. Sasaki relocated his wind phone to a hilltop garden (Garden of Bell Gardia) overlooking the Pacific Ocean at the foot of Kujira-Yama (“The Mountain of the Whale”), adjacent to the town of Ōtsuchi, which lost ten percent of its population to the tsunami.

The wind phone is maintained solely by Sasaki and his wife. Referred to as one of the world’s most powerful resilience sites, the wind phone greets thousands of grievers annually, who make the pilgrimage to speak with their departed loved ones. Sasaki has since inspired the creation of wind phones all over the world, with the sole purpose of holding space for grievers.

Our wind phone greets visitors on Hole 11 of The Evans at Canal Shores, a public golf course that spans the suburbs of Evanston and Wilmette. Since its placement in the summer of 2023, I have painted over 500 rocks to honor departed loved ones. The site is open to all.