[natural sound: wind blowing at the golf course]
South of Isabella Street on the Evans at Canal Shore’s 11th golf hole,
[natural sound: phone door opening]
a bright red telephone booth stands out against the surrounding trees.
[natural sound: walking while leaves crunching]
Signposted as the “Telephone of the Wind,” the disconnected rotary phone inside
[natural sound: rotary phone clicking]
allows users to pass a message to the dead.
Mary Leopold: It is a phone that people can pick up and talk to their loved ones as a symbolic gesture
Psychotherapist and Evanstonian Mary Leopold organized the installation of Evanston’s Wind Phone in 2023, two years after her son Oliver passed away.
Leopold: There were things that we did in Oliver’s honor, and the wind phone is one of them.
[natural sound: wind blowing louder]
Wind phones originated in Otsuchi, Japan, in 2010 when garden designer Itaru Sasaki
set up an old telephone booth to talk with his deceased cousin.
Leopold: I was just so drawn to the idea that I did research and learned all about it, and I had the idea to bring one here to our community. Leopold says people appreciate having an open space to grieve.
Leopold: It’s often not done publicly, right? It’s sort of behind closed doors and it’s not something that happens openly in our society
Creating community around mourning has helped Leopold with her own loss. Some of
her activities include painting rocks honoring deceased loved ones and meeting at the
wind phone with fellow bereaved mothers.
Leopold: I think for me and my grief, any way to connect in my case with other moms, other parents, has been really important in terms of my process because I just don’t feel so alone.
Wind phones have been a global phenomenon.
[natural sound: rotary phone clicking]
[natural sound: wind blowing with leaves]
Amy Dawson, the founder of the website, Facebook group, and Instagram account for
My Wind Phone, has mapped 361 wind phones in the United States and 525 phones
internationally.
She started tracking wind phones in 2022. Over the past three years, she’s watched this
online community grow.
Amy Dawson: There’s just so many wonderful people that find great comfort and healing in a windphone that join the community and help and talk and share ideas, and it’s been such a beautiful thing to watch.
Her interest began after her daughter Emily died two weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic.
Dawson: The wind phone, and my daughter, I believe, helped me shift my perspective on death, and I thought if it could help me the way it has, then it could help other people.
My-Wind-Phone-dot-com also spotlights wind phone variations, such as traveling wind phones alongside resources on how to create one yourself.
Dawson: Maybe you don’t live close enough to visit one or maybe you don’t have
the ability or you’re not comfortable, but you see a picture of someone who’s
created their own space for grief and it might inspire you to create your own.
[natural sound: rotary phone clicking]
The wind phone provides a line to remember the deceased. And for some, like Leopold,
it is also a way to connect with a surrounding community that she says has helped to
navigate life without her son.
Leopold: And that’s sort of the only way I know how to manage my grief is just to keep connecting with people and thinking of ways that Oliver would have connected
For WNUR, this is Chris Kim
[natural sound: hanging the phone up]