Golden Gate Park’s Newest Memorial Opens Its Arms to All Affected by Cancer

Stepping into San Francisco’s newest memorial on Golden Gate Park’s northwestern edge, all the busyness of the city and park seems to soften.

The space is small — just one wide stone pathway leading to an even wider circle, encircled by soaring greenery. On one side are wooden benches. On the other, a porous steel semicircle displays the names of 110 young people who have died from breast cancer — a ring which seems to float in midair.

“It’s a metaphorical hug,” said Meaghan Campbell, board member and volunteer for Bay Area Young Survivors, or BAYS: the support community for breast cancer patients and survivors, which was the force behind this new Breast Cancer Memorial Garden, the first of its kind in the country. The idea of an “infinite hug” was repeated to me several times on the sunny May morning just after the memorial first opened.

The new memorial, which has been in the works since 2009, overlooks the Conservatory of Flowers and the Golden Gate Bridge. Its entrance on Conservatory Drive features a sign welcoming survivors, their caregivers and anyone else affected by cancer — or in need of a quiet place to sit and reflect.

Each year, around 40,000 people die of breast cancer in the United States alone. Since the group’s inception in 2003, 110 have been BAYS members.

• Jump straight to: Five more spaces to honor, reflect and gather in the Bay Area

After a decade, a space with ‘a whole new meaning’

Visiting outdoor spaces like parks and beaches is known to improve mental health. And for someone who has just received the news of a diagnosis or needs a quiet moment amid the stress of caregiving, the garden opens its arms.

After more than a decade navigating design, approvals and discussing dozens of potential locations for the memorial, BAYS, the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department and consultants from InsideOut Design settled on this corner of Golden Gate Park as the site for the new memorial, said Daniel Montes, a parks department spokesperson.

“It had been taken over by plants and just kind of forgotten, but it’s been revived,” Montes said. “It’s totally new and it has a whole new meaning.”

Montes and Omar Davis, the parks department’s project manager for the memorial, said BAYS’ advocacy and unwavering commitment to the project ushered it through all 11 years of planning.

“As it turns out, there’s a lot of great ideas being pitched to Rec and Park for all kinds of new programs, new spaces,” Davis said. “But it is really incumbent on those groups to have that commitment. And BAYS was 1,000% committed.”

Founded in 2003, BAYS focuses on those diagnosed young — its members all received their cancer diagnosis before age 45. The group meets virtually, hosting events and connecting over Slack and Google groups, offering a forum to discuss the particularly difficult and often isolating questions and issues that are unique to the disease.

The group also provides support in the form of meal deliveries, gatherings and invaluable advice. In addition to regular volunteer workdays to maintain the garden, BAYS plans to hold events in the memorial in the future.

“Nobody should have to go through cancer alone, especially at a young age,” Campbell said. She was 32, in an MBA program and living in Canada when she felt a lump on her breast against her elbow that led to her diagnosis.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 10% of all new cases of breast cancer in the U.S. are found in women younger than 45. That number is increasing, according to the American Cancer Society. Campbell hopes the memorial will bring greater awareness to the fact that “young people get cancer, and they die at higher rates.”

In finalizing the design of the space, the group’s central focus was creating “a lightness as a counterbalance to the heavy reality of a memorial,” Campbell said.

The phrases written on the memorial — including “feeling makes us human” and “held aloft by loving community” — come from the four anthologies BAYS has published of writings from its members, many of whom have since passed.

‘Where we come together, where we grieve, we celebrate’

The vision for this memorial began with BAYS member and master gardener Melissa Wyss — and a need to gather.

Wyss “found so much healing with dirt, hands, sun, wind, in that outdoor space,” said Campbell, who co-project managed the space. “It was her who really set off this conversation around what could it be to have a physical spot where we come together, where we grieve, we celebrate, and that’s an extension of our support groups, and really for the whole world. Anybody who comes here can feel held, just like we do in BAYS.”

Nola Agha, a BAYS member, volunteer and one of the memorial’s project managers, introduced me to the women whose names are on display on the arc. Many of them were surrounded by flowers drying out in the sun, and Agha instinctively touched each name as she remembered something about each of them.

“This is Sarah. She was a young mother of two when she passed away,” Agha said. “Julie was a nurse. Kate was an amazing musician — she played the saxophone like nobody you could ever imagine.”

The first name on the arc, farthest to the left, is that of Deb Mosley, who founded BAYS. “We wouldn’t be here without her,” Agha said.

“These are my friends; these are people I miss,” Agha said, as she pointed out master gardner Wyss’ name next to Janet Sollod’s and Alison McCreery’s, who started the process of working with the parks department to create the memorial.

“We promised them we’d finish it,” she said. “And we did.”

Agha was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 35. Her two kids were two and three, and she had been breastfeeding, so she had misidentified a cancerous lump in her breast as a clogged duct.

One of the names on the memorial arc is of Lori Wallace-Pushinaitis, who Agha said received a similar diagnosis at the same time as her. “My treatment was successful, and hers wasn’t,” Agha said. Now, Agha has been diagnosed with lung cancer, possibly from the radiation that was used to treat her breast cancer, she said.

Closest to the center of the memorial, the words in the ground read, “learn how to survive, and in the process, how to live. Consider what the sum of our own lives will be. And it will be enough. And it will be enough. And it will be enough.”

“As you walk the labyrinth-like path and experience these arcs, you get to the center, and it’s the reflection of what the sum of our lives will be,” Campbell said. “And it will always be enough — it has to.”

Five more spaces to honor, reflect and gather in the Bay Area

National AIDS Memorial Grove, San Francisco

The 10 acres that make up the National AIDS Memorial Grove in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park take you through native forests with species like dogwoods, oaks, redwoods, pines and ferns and to babbling creeks and fountains.

The site commemorates those lost to the AIDS pandemic and today’s continued work to remember, heal and act against anti-LGBTQ+ stigma and hate. There are many spaces to sit and reflect in the shade of the trees, or simply stroll to clear your head.

Pulgas Water Temple, Redwood City

The Pulgas Water Temple off of Cañada Road in Redwood City marks the completion of the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and the first point where water from the Sierra reached the Bay Area at Crystal Springs Reservoir.

The tree-lined reflecting pool and lawn make for an idyllic picnic spot or place to rest and reflect. Tim Ramirez, who manages the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission’s Division of Natural Resources, said the temple is a reminder of the vision and foresight of those who first imagined Hetch Hetchy and its role in the success of San Francisco and the Bay Area as a whole.

Emeryville Shellmound Memorial, Emeryville

Once a massive archaeological site, the Emeryville Shellmound Memorial pays a small tribute to the history of the Ohlone people, whose shellmounds — used as burial or ceremonial sites — used to dot the Bay Area.

Now a shopping mall, the former shellmound was excavated to make way for the mall. This spot is often used as a gathering place for protests on Black Friday that call attention to the site’s destruction and the mishandling of Indigenous remains.

Angel Island Immigration Station, Angel Island

Between 1910 and 1940, around 500,000 immigrants from 80 countries arrived at Angel Island, many of whom were detained or interrogated as their status was processed. 

Now a state park and National Historic Landmark, the island houses a history museum and a monument to the Chinese immigrants who were detained on the island. A new exhibit opened this spring focusing on the U.S.-Mexico border amid President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Tanforan Memorial, San Bruno

Opened in 2022, the Tanforan Memorial commemorates the 8,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned there in 1942 while more permanent internment camps were under construction, after the United States invoked the Alien Enemies Act to detain people of Japanese descent living in the U.S.

Just outside of the San Bruno BART station, the memorial was designed to replicate a horse stall, like the ones detainees were forced to occupy at the former racetrack.