This morning, members of the Edina community are lining the streets with green balloons in memoriam of 8-year-old Quinn Kirsch, whose funeral service will be held this morning.
According to the Sun Current, “Kirsch, a third grader at Our Lady of Grace School, died unexpectedly of cardiac arrest on Monday, Jan. 7. He is survived by his parents Kyle and Kelly Kirsch of Edina, and his brothers, Jack, Connor and Ryan.” The route to Kirsch’s funeral, which will take place this morning, will be lined with green balloons.
Volunteers include Joanne Patterson, mother of Carolyn Patterson ’14 and Stuart Patterson ’16, who live in the Country Club neighborhood of Edina.
The Patterson siblings have a brother, Nicholas, who is in the third grade at Edina. Of Kirsch, Carolyn Patterson says, “he was on my brother’s hockey team a couple years ago. This isn’t something that should happen to someone in the third grade.”
Caiti Petrocchi ’13‘s younger sister, Emma, is a fifth grader at Our Lady of Grace. “She said she was really freaked out by it,” says Petrocchi. “Last night she was crying to my mom about it.” Emma Pettrochi is attending Kirsch’s funeral this morning.
Maddy Watchmaker ’14 and Kirsch were both members of the Team Gilboa, who practices at Highland Hills. “He was in the junior race program, so I didn’t know him,” she says. At Watchmaker’s ski practice on Tuesday, the team signed commemorative boards with Kirsch’s face on them, writing messages of support and love to his family. These posters will be brought to the funeral this morning.
Blake parent Kathy Sandy is at 50th and 100 in Edina setting up balloons along the streets alongside about twenty members of the Sunnyslope Neighborhood in which she lives. According to the Sun Current, green balloons were available today at Jerry’s Foods on Vernon Ave. in Edina and at Party City at the Knollwood Mall in St. Louis Park.
“We ordered our balloons yesterday from Jerry’s and when we went to pick them up this morning it was just flooded with probably a hundred people trying to buy and pick up balloons,” says Sandy. The store “did an excellent job accommodating everyone, but the demand was definitely greater than what any one store could supply.”
The support that Edina citizens are showing today is “definitely good for the family,” says Patterson. “They know they have a lot of support from the community, from where they live. They can reach out for help because they know that everyone is supporting them, and everyone’s there for them.”
Continues Sandy, “People who don’t even know the family just want to, as a community, show that we support them and care about them, and that we are thinking of their lost loved one.”
