ANNA MARIA – Bradenton Beach resident Rob Edwards made a heartwarming discovery while recently photographing the sunrise at the Anna Maria City Pier.
Edwards, a retired electrician from New York, often takes photographs of the Island sunrises to send to his snowbird friends up north. On Sept. 9, which also happened to be his son’s birthday, he decided to take that day’s sunrise photo at the City Pier.
While standing among the shoreline rocks near the foot of the pier, Edwards looked down and saw a rock with Winnie the Pooh painted on one side of it. Winnie the Pooh happens to be one of his son’s favorite characters. At first, Edwards thought he’d found a rock painted by Marilia Stumpf Clarke, an Island resident who paints messages on rocks – sometimes called “kindness rocks” or “kindness stones” – and leaves them all over the Island. But when Edwards picked up this rock and read the memorial message on the other side, he knew it was something different.
The message on the rock says, “In memory of Ava Rose Vaske, Oct. 4, 2002 – Sept. 11, 2022, West Des Moines, Iowa.”
Not knowing what to do with his discovery, Edwards took the rock home and posted photos of it on the Anna Maria Island Life Facebook page. Someone suggested he reach out to Ava’s family. From a family member, Edwards learned Ava passed away from ovarian cancer at the age of 19. She had been planning a trip to Anna Maria Island but never made it due to her illness. According to Ava’s still-active Facebook page, she was a student at Iowa State University.
After Ava’s passing, her mother decided to paint rocks in her memory and have friends place them in various places so her spirit could experience those places. She painted 100 rocks, three of which featured Winnie the Pooh, a favorite of Ava’s. One of the three Pooh rocks was placed on Ava’s grave. Another was given to a young girl at the Mayo Clinic suffering from the same disease. The third Pooh rock was given to a family friend who was headed to Anna Maria Island. That friend placed Ava’s rock near the City Pier.
The family member Edwards communicated with told him to keep the rock. Given the affinity Ava and his son shared for Winnie the Pooh, and the fact that he found the painted rock on his son’s birthday, Edwards decided to carry it with him on his Island travels and post photos of those experiences on Facebook.
Edwards has since shared photos of Ava’s rock by a parrot cage at the Sun and Surf beach shop in Holmes Beach, on the beach near the 26th Street street-end in Bradenton Beach, and at sunrise by the dock at the Sandpiper Resort mobile home park where he lives. His Facebook posts have generated more than 1,000 likes, comments and emojis from other Facebook users.
“The family is ecstatic over the outpouring of love and compassion shown by so many total strangers,” Edwards said. “As for the Ava stone, Ava and I will continue to travel together.”
