Here’s what was said at the street naming ceremony for “Lily’s Greenway,” honoring the life and memory of Elizabeth “Lily” Grace Shambrook, 3

The 46th Ward shared an invitation to last Saturday’s ceremony for street signs officially designating the 1400 Block of Leland Avenue in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood as “Honorary Lily’s Greenway.”

Tragically, Streetsblog readers are familiar with Elizabeth “Lily” Grace Shambrook, 3. On the morning of June 9, 2022, she was riding in a child seat on the back of her mother’s bicycle as her parents rode on Leland towards the shoreline. An illegally parked ComEd truck blocked the bike lane, causing the crash that took the girl’s life.

Earlier this month, alders cited Lily’s case as a motivation for Chicago’s Smart Streets pilot, which enables camera enforcement of bus and bike lanes, and bus stops. Her story helped other City Council members understand why keeping these facilities clear is a crucial safety issue, and they unanimously voted for the ordinance to make the program permanent and expand it citywide. That will help protect other Chicago children.

Saturday’s event was intended as a celebration of Lily Shambrook’s brief, but meaningful, time here “Though Lily’s life was far too short, her spirit, joy, and love for her community will forever be remembered,” the announcement said. “We hope you’ll join us alongside Lily’s family, friends, and neighbors as we celebrate her beautiful life and ensure her memory remains a part of the neighborhood she called home.”

The weather was beautiful on Saturday morning. More than 65 of Lily’s loved ones, friends of the family, and supporters gathered at the southeast corner of Leland Avenue and Dover Street in Uptown’s Sheridan Park enclave, by a colorful parkway garden. Many of them rode bicycles there.

“Beyond just renaming a street, we are here to celebrate a life and a neighbor,” said 46th Ward representative Ald. Angela Clay. “I’m so happy to see that there are so many tiny neighbors out here with us today, because I think that that speaks to our community and how we show up for each other, and most importantly, how we show up for our babies.”

After calling for a round of applause for Lily’s “beautiful family,” the alder read a proclamation that was adopted by Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City Council. “Whereas Elizabeth ‘Lily’ Grace Shambrook was born in Chicago in 2019, the beloved daughter of Kate Snow and Tim Shambrook, and older sister to Elliot Shambrook,” the document stated. The father held the boy in his father’s arms during the reading. “Whereas Lily will be fondly remembered as a kind, smart, and funny girl who, who was quick with a smile and a wave, and was a pleasure to all who knew her.”

“Lily was a regular on the streets of Sheridan Park, traveling all over the neighborhood on foot, in her stroller, and on her bike,” the statement continued. “Leland was a road that led to so many adventures for her: her route to the beach, the bus, the train, and daycare. Lily was always up for an adventure, visiting sites across our city and its surroundings, directing her gaze and learning about the city, telling her parents things like, ‘Not Welles [Park], Dada, Winnemac [Park],’ and she guided her own travels.”

“Lily’s adventures taught her so well about her city, so that she would request to stop at the Buckingham Fountain on the way to see the dinosaurs at the Field Museum,” the proclamation continued. “All the meanwhile, asking for her stroller to be laid back so she could see all the tall building along the way.”

“Lily is dearly missed by not just her parents and younger brother, by all of her family and community,” the document concluded. “Be it resolved that we, the mayor and members of the City Council of the City of Chicago, do hereby honor the life and legacy of Elizabeth ‘Lily’ Grace Shambrook, celebrate the life she lived and her love for Chicago, and extend our deepest condolences to her family, friends, and all who were touched by her life.”

The attendees applauded. Clay invited family and friends of Lily to speak.

“I just want to say thank you for everybody who came out at such short notice,” Tim Shambrook said, addressing the crowd. “I’d to say thank you to the alderwoman. Right after everything happened, the [April 2023 aldermanic election that elected Clay] happened, I walked into the office with a full head of steam and talked to Anna [Gaebler, the director of infrastructure at the time] for about two minutes. She’s like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got to figure this out.’ And she called me into her office about a month later, just to show me what [the Chicago Department of Transportation] wanted to do, and it was it was a very healing moment to actually see that the bump-outs [to prevent illegal parking near intersections] and the greenway were actually going to be taken care of, after so many years of not being there. So it was really nice to see the City quickly jump in and do something about it.”

Next, Shambrook reminisced about being “a COVID dad,” spending lots of time with Lily during the pandemic. “We’d go out all the time, and we’d run around this neighborhood,” he said. “We’d go up and down Leland and we’d go to the beach. I could sit there and dig her out a little two foot hole. I’d sit back and read a book, and she just play in the sand on Montrose Beach. Or going out to the Metra Station to visit grandparents, ’cause they all lived just off of there. Leland was definitely a highway for our family in terms of getting back and forth, and it still is. We took the Leland Greenway all the way here from the new house.”

“It’s nice to know that out of the loss that we suffered, the City has actually answered some of the some the things that advocates have been asking for for so long,” Shambrook continued. “It’s crummy that it has to take the death of a few little children in two weeks – three kids. I think it was [State Rep.] Kam Buckner who said, we lost a little Black boy, a little Brown boy, and little white girl all the same month. And it’s just not acceptable. We’ve got to make some changes within the system.”

On June 2, 2022, a week before Lily’s crash, an SUV driver fatally struck Raphael “Rafi” Cardenas, 2, as he rode a mini scooter into a Lincoln Square intersection. And on June 16, a week later, a hit-and-run driver fatally struck Ja’lon James, 11, while he was walking in North Lawndale.

“It’s really neat to see the changes that have happened,” Tim Shambrook added. “I hope it goes citywide. I hope that we don’t have a horrible referendum of yay or nay in February [during the mayoral and aldermanic election.]”

“I know that you touched briefly in the resolution on one of the bike rides Lily and I took about a week before her third birthday,” Shambrook said to Clay. “She and I had spent a lot of time going around the city and going down to Art Institute and looking for certain things, looking for circles, squares, certain colors, or that type of thing. We went for bike ride the week before her third birthday, looking for big things on the lakefront. We found the big green man, the big blue windmill, the big white anchor, and the big Ferris wheel.”

“And when we were underneath the big Ferris wheel, I said, ‘Hey bud, let’s go have our snacks under the big dinosaur.'” Tim mentioned. “She said, ‘No, Dad, I want to go to Buckingham Fountain first.’ And I was thinking, ‘Wow, we’re seven miles from home, and you know that Buckingham fountain slots between Navy Pier and the Field Museum. We must be doing something right.’ And I also think it’s the having kids outside of cars, having kids on bikes, strollers, taking transit. They learn so much more about their city than being ferried around in a car. And I just hope that our city continues to get better with making travel options available, instead of just relying on cars so much.”

“We miss her dearly,” Tim said.

“We do,” seconded Kate Snow.

“But this little guy’s keeping us on our toes,” Tim sad with a laugh. “Filling our cup.”

“Thank you everyone, for coming,” Snow added. “It means so much to us.”

Ald. Clay then asked the crowd to “take a deep breath together as a community to honor this beautiful baby and to also send her family some love” by projecting positive energy. After a count, he group exhaled together.

“We appreciate you for sharing your baby with us,” Clay told Lily’s family. “We appreciate you for being amazing neighbors with us. We will make sure that Lily’s legacy lives on.”

After that, the family pulled the sleeve off the sign, and “Lily’s Greenway” became a permanent feature of the Uptown comunity.

If you appreciate Streetsblog Chicago’s reporting and advocacy on local sustainable transportation issues, please consider making a tax-deductible donation here. Thank you.