(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- People who have lost a loved one have a new place to try to connect with them now that an Evanston mother has helped install a “wind phone” at the Canal Shores Golf Course.
Mary Leopold lost her 19-year-old son Oliver in December 2021. The licensed clinical social worker learned about wind phones, an idea that started in Japan more than a decade ago.
“Saying what you want to say to that person or people and then just kind of letting – this is kind of the original meaning – just letting your words kind of be carried by the wind,” Leopold explains. “Which I think is so beautiful.”
The Canal Shores board approved Oliver’s wind phone, which was installed in June near Hole 11. It’s a non-working rotary phone that sits inside a vintage British-style phone booth. It's colored fire engine red, as a nod to the paramedic career her son planned to start.
There is a camera to prevent damage and a solar panel to illuminate the booth at night. The social worker has also started painting rocks for the departed, if their loved ones request one, and placing them outside of it.
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