Parkway Children's Memorial Collection

The Parkway's Children Memorial was founded to honor the lives and memory of five Denton children who died in a car accident on Sunday February 4, 1990. Marcella England along with two friends and her children Edna, 16, Clara, 14, Ella, 12, Virginia, and Virgil, 10 were on their way back to Texas when, at 7:30am, their truck skidded on the ice that covered a bridge on Interstate 44, causing it to crash. Only Marcella and her friend, Howard Bouchard, survived. Marcella's children and the other passenger, Arthur Brown, 20, did not survive the accident.

Upon hearing the news, neighbors of the Englands on Parkway were saddened, and thus galvanized to create the Parkway Children's Memorial, a community collective that was dedicated to creating a memorial to honor the England children. Inital efforts also included the intitative to create a greenspace by demolishing the house that the Englands once lived in, the reasoning being that the house itself caused a trecherous blindspot for traffic on the connecting road. Co-chair of the committee, Rebecca Kroll, wrote letters to Denton's mayor, Denton City Council, churches, and local businesses, imploring them to support the Memorial's cause. The neighborhood raised money and brainstormed ideas for what would be best for a memorial to honor the children and surviving family. A garage sale was held in May 1990 as a fundraiser for the memorial. Although they did not create a greenspace, the Parkway's Children Memorial Collective decided on a bench. The Parkway Children's Memorial bench, along with several trees, were place in front of the Denton Chamber of Commerce in February 1991. In 2021 the Parkway's Children Memorial bench was moved to the Emily Fowler Central Library.