The Star News (Summer 2005)

Elk River artist Cari Rock remembered

By Britt Aamodt

Artist, book lover, nature lover, gardener, wife, mother—Cari Rock was a woman of many dimensions. And to every role she brought the incandescent good humor that characterized her life.

“Cari was a redhead, you know,” said friend Linda Thiltgen. “And she was as feisty as her hair was red. She never lost her feistiness even when she lost her hair.”
Rock died of breast cancer November 7, 2002. She was 44.

The public is invited to the Cari Rock Memorial Garden dedication, 7 p.m. Friday, June 17. Attendees should meet at the garden, which is located at Handke Stadium’s southeast corner on Main Street by the old school bell.

Pastor Greg Pagh of Christ Lutheran Church will give the blessing, and Emily Rock, Rock’s daughter, will provide musical accompaniment on piano. Everyone is encouraged to share stories and bring a small smooth stone to place in the garden.

“Everybody talked about building a memorial for a while,” said Linda Thiltgen, who became the Memorial Garden project coordinator.

Friends and family—husband Lee, and children Emily, Andy and Jesse—wanted to honor Rock’s memory, but every idea seemed to come up short. How could a single monument or marker encapsulate such a wide-ranging personality?

Then Tony Darkenwald of the Elk River Area Arts Alliance, where Rock had been a board member, suggested doing something at Handke School. The school houses the ERAAA office and is the proposed site of a regional arts center, a project Rock helped formulate.

The idea “just happened to coincide with the Rotary Club’s renovation of the Handke Stadium,” said Thiltgen. “They put in a stone bench, and it seemed like a natural spot for a little garden.”

The members of Rock’s book club, all master gardeners, offered to transplant perennials from the Rock house in Elk River to the Memorial Garden. Daughter Emily and artist Liane Kramer Kondrak assembled a mosaic featuring ceramic pieces Rock used in her own artwork.

“The garden will have three stones representing her three children, and each stone will be engraved with a word—Love, Peace and Joy—because I know that’s what she wished for her children,” said Thiltgen.

A larger central stone bears the inscription: Let Your Spirit Dance.

Thiltgen said the phrase recalls Rock’s own dancing spirit.

“Cari was just such a large spirit, so fun and down to earth,” she explained. “That’s the feeling we want people to come away with. And I think that’s the purpose of the garden. Her spirit will continue to touch generations who never even knew her.”

Journalist

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