Sign memorializing 10-year-old is vandalized

Less than two weeks after neighbors and city officials came together to dedicate a memorial plaza near Churchill High School in Eugene in memory of 10-year-old Vaclav Hajek and others killed in bicycle-car collisions, someone decided to deface it.

“It doesn’t surprise me,” said Tom Schneider, a member of the city’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee and the Bailey Hill Road Safety Committee, who spearheaded the effort to build the $15,000 memorial. “If you’ve got 1,000 good kids trying to protect a sign, it only takes one bad one. It’s one of the things we’re going to have to deal with. The community is going to have to continue to come together.”

The memorial sign was twice marked with illegible scribblings in red and blue paint over the weekend. Schneider suspects cleaning the sign of graffiti will become a regular part of maintaining it.

Vaclav Hajek was killed by a speeding teenage motorist on Aug. 27, 2007, as he tried to cross Bailey Hill Road while pushing his bicycle. His death led to the formation of the Bailey Hill Road Safety Committee, which pushed the city to create improvements to the road between West 18th Avenue and Warren Street. Last summer, a $1.34 million project reduced the stretch of road from four lanes to two and two new crosswalks were installed, one with a pedestrian-­activated flashing yellow light.

But Schneider and others, including Marina Hajek, Vaclav’s mother, wanted to do something more, and came up with the memorial idea. Eugene Mayor Kitty Piercy and other city officials helped remove sod, pour concrete and install two black metal benches last month. The plaza was officially dedicated on June 8 and the ceremony included a “memory board” display of photos with other young people killed in accidents in recent years, including David Minor and Nima Gibba.

The 3-foot by 2-foot sign that was defaced was paid for with a $1,200 contribution from the Jane Higdon Foundation, established after the 2006 death of Eugene’s Jane Higdon, 47, who was killed while riding her bicycle on Territorial Highway southwest of Eugene when her bike slipped beneath the wheels of a logging truck.

The sign was reportedly marked Friday night with red ink, said Thomas Price, chairman of the Churchill Area Neighbors. Marina Hajek said she used an alcohol-based remover on the sign Saturday but it didn’t work very well. The sign reads “Start Seeing Everyone” on the side facing the road. It was the other side, facing the memorial, that was defaced. That side reads, “What’s the No. 1 cause of death for Oregon youth? It’s not guns … it’s not drugs … it’s not cancer … It’s motor vehicle crashes. Be Seen. Be Safe. Please Drive Carefully.” The sign features a graphic of the state of Oregon, filled in with photographs of McCornack (where Vaclav attended) students who contributed their phrases to the project.

When Price went out on Sunday, he noticed someone had marked the two black metal benches at the plaza with red ink and put blue ink on the sign.

Beneath the children’s photos, someone wrote, “It’s not,” followed by illegible markings. Empty Rockstar energy drink cans and cigarette butts littered the memorial site — on the edge of the Churchill Youth Sports Park, which includes a softball field and skate park — on Tuesday.

There is also a memorial rock at the site, in memory of Vaclav Hajek, that reads, “a ten-year old boy who enjoyed life to its fullest and was loved by so many. His life ended here on August 27, 2007, by a speeding driver.”

“I know there are some kids who are upset (about the memorial sign) because I confronted one of them,” Marina Hajek said. A couple of weeks ago she said she got into an argument during construction of the sign with one of the teenage skaters at the skate park, who said too much of a fuss has been made with all the safety improvements to Bailey Hill Road and the memorial plaza.

The teenager said the accident in which Hajek’s son died was not the teenage driver’s fault, Marina Hajek said. “I made the mistake to argue too much with him,” she said. “He was telling me this was a project to attack the teenagers. We are not attacking anybody,” Hajek said. “This is to make sure this doesn’t happen to anybody else.”