Orange County Regional History Center staff will collect the final Pulse memorial items from the lawn of the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Orlando Monday. Their next step will be to document the more than 2,000 items for a permanent museum exhibit. That means taking photos, measuring their size, and writing out a brief description of each non-perishable item, including teddy bears, handwritten notes, and photographs. They will then place the descriptions into a computer database that will be open to the public.
“This will be the largest collection of single items for the history center. It’s a multi-stage process," says museum manager Michael Perkins.
“The memorials are the little silver lining of good news around such a tragic event that made people realize how important it is that we all live in a community of more harmony than perhaps we did.”
Perkins expects to help collect items from the makeshift memorial outside Pulse nightclub in the coming weeks.
City officials have not yet decided where a permanent Pulse memorial will be located.