Families gathered at City Park on Saturday for the third annual Avy’s Sunshine Kite Festival, an event created to honor and remember lost loved ones. The festival combined outdoor activities such as kite decorating, bead crafting, and lemonade drinking with a communal space for mourning and remembrance.

The festival was founded by Naïma Hill in memory of her daughter, Aveline “Avy” Hill, who died at 22 months old in a car accident. Inspired by a similar tradition in Guatemala where people fly kites to remember ancestors, Hill sought to create a more meaningful way for families to process grief and connect with others experiencing loss. “It’s a place that people can come together and celebrate all of their lost loved ones, and at the same time connect with each other,” Hill said.

Visitors took part in various activities designed to celebrate and commemorate. Quinton Random attended with his three sons to remember his brother, who had died in a motorcycle crash two weeks earlier. “Normally, when people die, everybody just moves on,” Random said. “Stuff like this is a way to remember and acknowledge it.”

Similarly, Scott McGraw brought his granddaughter, Lyla Nguyen, 3, to the event to honor his mother, Gaylia Fitzgerald, who had passed away just days before the festival. McGraw described the event as a meaningful way to celebrate memories without focusing solely on mourning. “It’s just a nice way to honor people and to celebrate their memories and not necessarily have to mourn,” he said.

For Patrice McConnell, the festival offered an opportunity to keep the memory of her cousin, Greta McConnell, alive after Greta’s death from ALS last year. McConnell brought her 5-year-old daughter to the festival both for a fun outing and to instill a sense of legacy. “It’s really important that I try to keep her legacy alive,” she said.

Avy’s Sunshine Tribe, the organizing group behind the festival, partnered with several local organizations to provide free food, refreshments, and resources for attendees. The Child Poverty Action Lab offered free meals and assistance with public benefit programs such as SNAP, while Keith McKinnon, a friend of Hill, staffed a suicide prevention booth. McKinnon, who also lost his teenage son to suicide the same week Avy died, has since worked closely with Hill in mutual support efforts. His suicide prevention initiatives include Daniel’s Garden, a community garden dedicated to his son, while Hill is raising funds through the festival toward building a playground in City Park’s Cedars neighborhood.

As morning clouds gave way to a rising breeze around 11 a.m., children launched their kites into the air, many adorned with ribbons or drawings bearing the names of those they had lost. The festival blended remembrance with community and hope, creating a shared space for healing through the simple act of flying kites.