After the crash at Gander, fifteen-year-old Canadian Janice Johnston Nikkel of Oakville, Ontario, sought to reach the families of the fallen Fort Campbell soldiers by writing to the Toronto Star that she would donate her babysitting money to buy trees as a living memorial to those who died in her country. Her twenty-dollar gift and memorial idea spread globally, drawing praise from world leaders and celebrities through phone calls, telegrams, and letters, along with one thousand seven hundred dollars in donations. On September 20, 1986, her vision became reality when the sixteen-year-old and her family traveled from Canada to Fort Campbell to dedicate a grove of Canadian sugar maple saplings during a memorial ceremony. Two hundred fifty-six trees were dedicated, representing the two hundred forty-eight soldiers and eight crew members who died at Gander. The grove stood between Normandy and Screaming Eagle Boulevards and was replaced by the current grove in 2019. Its dedication plaque said the trees were donated by the people of Canada to the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) in memory of the two hundred forty-eight soldiers who died in Gander, Newfoundland, on December 12, 1985, and that each tree stood as a living memorial testifying to their united commitment to global peacekeeping. Janice and her family visited the mature grove in the summer of 2010, nearly twenty-five years after the crash, and she said the memorial park was meant to show the families that Canadians cared and that their loved ones were not forgotten.