Mum wins fight for memorial bench where her son was found dead

A mother’s wish for a memorial bench to honour her dead son and the Whangaparāoa community who came together to find him 11 days after he went missing has finally been granted.

By Torika Tokalau of LDR

The Hibiscus and Bays Local Board met on Tuesday to approve a bench for Tyler Porter at Arkles Bay at Whangaparāoa, Auckland.

Tyler died last July, after he lost his footing on his walk home for dinner.

After an 11-day search by family, friends and the wider community, his body was discovered under a tree that has come to be known as Tyler’s tree.

His mum, Shara-Lee Porter, said she was relieved the bench was finally approved.

“I’ve stuck by this for so long, so much energy ... at one point, I wasn’t sure we were ever going to achieve this,” she said.

Her request was initially turned down by local board staff earlier this year, who told her personal memorials at parks were only considered for people who had made a memorable contribution to the community.

Tyler died a few weeks short of his 21st birthday.

Porter said the green light for the memorial bench, under Tyler’s tree, couldn’t be more significant.

The tree had become a temporary memorial, representing a community space for remembrance, reflection, connection and healing for many.

It has been targeted and damaged, with sentimental items allegedly stolen several times, flowers thrown in a bin and fairy lights ripped down.

“I come into this from a pretty dark place with the one-year anniversary coming up, but I’m so relieved. I can’t wait to tell people who have been so supportive that as a community we stood together and we achieved this.”

At the Tuesday meeting, local board chair Alexis Poppelbaum said the initial request was declined by staff under the standard framework of the board’s local park management plan.

The policy did not support personal memorials in parks, to help preserve parks as open and inclusive spaces for all, and consideration was typically only for historically or culturally significant people, events, or significant community contributions.

Poppelbaum said upon review, the circumstances of Porter’s request met the criteria.

The search for Tyler at Arkles Bay mobilised hundreds of local residents and drew regional media coverage, was an event of particular significance to the local community, and brought together “the spirit of the community that has not been forgotten”.

“The Porter family had done everything right, they waited patiently and engaged respectfully and prepared to meet the full costs themselves.”

In her report, Poppelbaum said Porter’s request highlighted a real tension in the standard memorial bench criteria of community contribution, which would systematically exclude young people.

“That is not irrational in the general case; longevity of service is a reasonable proxy for impact. But it becomes an arbitrary barrier when the reason a young person is remembered is precisely that they died young, in circumstances that galvanised the community around them.

“Tyler was, by the accounts provided by his family, community-minded – he volunteered with elderly neighbours in Whangaparāoa. The standard criteria simply did not give him time to build the kind of record the framework ordinarily requires.”

– LDR is local body journalism co-funded by RNZ and NZ On Air.