Pikes Peak Hospice & Palliative Care has left its mark on Nancy Lewis Park through the past three decades: Trees planted, memorial benches placed, art fixtures displayed.

With the park approaching 30 years in the Templeton Gap area of Colorado Springs, Pikes Peak Hospice Foundation Executive Director Susan Edmondson said the organization wanted to note the occasion.

“We wanted to do something special to mark that moment,” she said.

That something special was a wind phone. Created by Japanese artist Itaru Sasaki, the first wind phone was placed on a cliff overlooking the Pacific by the town of Otsuchi after the deadly 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. The idea is to provide a space, often a quiet spot in nature, where people can “call” loved ones who have passed.

The concept caught on worldwide. There are now over 600 wind phones, including a handful in Colorado.

The wind phone in Nancy Lewis is simply designed, providing a two-sided screen for conversations next to a gurgling fountain in the park’s pond.

“We create a little bit of privacy, but not seclusion,” said Edmondson.

Nancy Lewis Park was founded in 1996 and is named after a longtime advocate for Colorado Springs parks and open space. Lewis started with the city’s parks department in the 1960s, served as its director in the 1980s and contributed heavily as a volunteer after her retirement.

In 2011, she co-authored a book, “The Parks of Colorado Springs: Building Community, Preserving a Legacy.” She died in 2018 at the age of 79.

At a dedication on Wednesday, Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade said Lewis’ namesake park has been a favorite in his family. He said it was one of the first parks he showed to his adopted son.

“These places become part of our story,” he said.

Edmondson said she hoped people would both seek out the wind phone intentionally and come across it organically. A QR code near the old-fashioned rotary phone leads to information about wind phones and to Pikes Peak Hospice’s grief and support groups, which are open to anyone regardless of whether their loved one was in a hospice program.

“It’s a place to realize that grief and love can coexist,” she said.