Katie Friesen and Jeanette Mathews were members of the class of 2011. In 2009 Mathews died of natural causes and Friesen was killed in an automobile accident during a class field trip.
Among the speakers were Friesen's father, Dr. Brian Friesen, classmates Aly Shackelford and Mariah Mandelbaum and alumnus Kelly Nachtigall, who designed the memorial. The bench and garden are between East Hall and Strasbourg Quad on the main campus.
Mathews played trumpet with the FPU Community Wind Ensemble and performed with the group in New York's Carnegie Hall in April 2009.Friesen is remembered as confident, self-directed, humorous and committed, a great teller of stories and lover of life with a unique sense of fashion.