Artist brings ‘wall of hope’ to honor those missing, killed in Kerr County

KERRVILLE, Texas (KXAN) — Leo Soto had so many boxes of flowers – all donated – that he needed help finding a truck in town to help transfer them all.

“It’s amazing,” he said.

He lives in Miami, Florida, and he’s traveled to cities across the country – and the world – following major tragedies.

He puts together what he calls a “Wall of Hope.” He gets permission from cities and/or businesses to set up flowers and photos across a fence, which ends up turning into a growing memorial where anyone impacted can add their own photos, candles, flowers – anything they want.

“I supply the canvas,” Soto said. “They make it personal.”

He does this on his own time, with the goal of giving people in the thick of devastation “a chance to exhale.”

On the Kerrville Wall of Hope, he included photos of individuals who are either missing or who have passed.

“You hear of casualty counts and you hear of numbers, and it kind of desensitizes you towards how much pain and suffering is behind each of those casualty counts,” he said. “So, I think looking at the pictures of each individual person and thinking that there’s a family suffering behind each of those pictures really brings home the feeling of honoring the people that were lost, and thinking of their legacy, and really giving an appreciation for the people in your life who you also love.”