In February 2022, a crash on Ohio 19 in Ottawa County took the life of Shannon Roberts’ 17-year-old son, Richie, and his friend, who was driving. “He was a great kid and didn’t deserve what happened,” she says. “It was a complete accident and nobody’s to blame.”
Drivers in Ohio pass them by, often without a second thought — a small cross or a bouquet of flowers, a candle or a stuffed animal, any of a number of seemingly insignificant trinkets. But to the folks who have erected these roadside memorials, they mean the world.