Monte Vista Wind Phone becomes 'a place of healing and hope'

The Wind Phone stands with a cracked door, an invitation for those who are grieving to enter.A rotary phone hangs along the inside of the booth. Sticky notes with loving farewells and gratitude decorate the wall space next to it. Though the phone is disconnected, the numbers are dialable and encourage guests in the phone booth to make a call to loved ones who have passed.Anthony Harris, location manager at Monte Vista Funeral Home and Memorial Park, said the Wind Phone then releases the spoken messages to the breeze."It's a special place (people) can come and talk to their loved one," Harris said. "Maybe be able to have that final conversation that they didn't get to have before their passing in a private setting to where nobody can judge them, and nobody can hear what they say. Then the wind just carries that conversation in the wind. Just a neat, serene setting they can come without the thought of being judged."Wind Phone OriginThe booth was an idea brought to the Monte Vista Funeral Home and Memorial Park by Mary Lietzke, funeral director, in early January. Harris admitted while he was originally skeptical about the installation of the booth, the chance to give people a way to cope with their grief was the drive behind crafting the Wind Phone."We started looking at it and just really saw the benefits it could have here," he said. "Not only for people who have someone who's buried here, but maybe somebody that doesn't have someone buried here. Maybe they chose cremation or it's been a tragic death–something like that–they didn't have a place to go and remember or talk to the loved one. This was the idea."Harris said the original Wind Phone was created in 2010 by a man named Itaru Sasaki in Japan. Sasaki created the booth in his garden and used it to "speak" to his deceased cousin. It wasn't long after the Wind Phone's creation the Fukushima tsunami hit Japan in 2011, leading to Sasaki opening the phone booth for neighbors to use to mourn lost loved ones.Now, over a decade since its creation, a Wind Phone has been localized to Johnson City. Harris said Monte Vista's Wind Phone is the only one located in the Tri-Cities and was built "from the ground up," with employees at Monte Vista furnishing the booth and landscaping around its area to make it welcoming to guests."There's nobody here, 50 to 100-mile radius here, that has one," Harris said. "The phone booth that you see out there, it was absolutely handcrafted from the ground up. Our maintenance guys, Thomas Clark, who's the maintenance supervisor, and Charles Hollifeld, they took the idea. We threw a bunch of stuff at them and showed them some pictures, and (they) handcrafted it from the ground up…It became open to the public May 10, is when it was start to be used."Community effectsHarris said the Wind Phone has already had many interactions, estimating hundreds of people have used it since it was opened to the public. Some of the ways Monte Vista has been able to determine its use is by the sticky-note messages left on the wall next to the phone and the painted rocks left in the landscaping mulch, as well as general inquiries about what the Wind Phone is."When we walk outside or go out on a service and see somebody out there, that's a reminder to us that it was the right decision to put it in," said Harris.One visitor to the Wind Phone was Mona Wamsley's grandson, George "G.W." Wamsley IV. She said George used the phone booth to give a call to his grandfather while she had come to visit her husband's grave."He thought it was getting close to his poppy," Mona said. "He said, 'I'll go over and talk to him.' I said 'Go right ahead, talk to your poppy.'...It made him feel better–he come out crying."Mona added she believed the Wind Phone was a thoughtful way for people to be able to grieve, especially after her grandson had the chance to express his own method of coping through the booth's one-way call."I think it's nice," she said. "I think it's really nice for people to just go in there and be able to feel like they're talking to them, and not have everybody–you know, if there's other people here–they don't have to hear what they're saying. My grandson loved it. He just thought that it was the most awesomest thing there ever was."Harris said the response from the community to the Wind Phone has led to discussions for another Wind Phone to be created at Roselawn Memory Gardens cemetery. He added the aspiration for the Wind Phone was to give people a sense of consolement while they took time to mourn the ones they've lost."Our hopes is that it will be a way that folks can cope with that grief, and walk away and feel comforted, like they've been able to express those things that they did not get to express," said Harris. "A lot of people carry grief with them for many years to come, and the idea behind this is it's a safe place they can go and just be able to say those things, and have that conversation, and share those thoughts and the feelings and memories, and help them feel close to that person, even though they're not here."Harris said whether someone has a loved one buried at the Monte Vista cemetery or not, the Wind Phone is available to visit "from dusk to dawn," providing an open door for visitors to work their way through the grieving process."The Wind Phone, of course, it's a calling to the wind," he said. "It's a place of healing and hope. Truthfully and honestly, if you try to grip it in a nutshell, really that's what it is–it's a place of healing and hope."