Peace has been restored to the yard and mind of a father who lost his daughter to cancer, then lost her memorial to an unknown thief.

Thanks to the efforts and generosity of a whole cast of local individuals and businesses, Christopher Woityra once again has a large, wooden sculpture of a peace symbol adorning the special garden he created to honor his daughter, Taylor Beth Woityra. She passed away in September 2014 at the age of 21 from complications stemming from her treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Looking at the new peace sign, Woityra, a Brandon Township resident, said, “I know my daughter’s smiling.”

The original wooden peace sign that sat in the yard of his home on S. Sashabaw Rd. was stolen in broad daylight in July 2016 and never recovered.

“It basically vanished,” he said.

It had been carved by Gary Elzerman, a local chainsaw artist whose work is well-known and respected in the Oxford area. He used a 42-inch diameter log to create the sculpture.

Elzerman and Woityra have been friends since their school days. Both are 1985 graduates of Lake Orion High School.

After accepting the fact that the original sculpture wasn’t coming back, Woityra decided to ask Mary Guinn, of Orion Township, if he could have a white pine tree growing in her yard in order to have a new one carved.

“The tree was mammoth,” he said.

It had a 41-inch diameter and was approximately 110 feet tall.

Guinn “didn’t hesitate” to oblige him.

“I just felt it was the right thing to do,” she said. “It’s only a tree. It’s being put to good use.”

“I know what it’s like to lose a child,” Guinn noted.

One of her sons, Nicholas, died in a car accident at the age of 18.

Elzerman arranged for Mr. Tree, an Oxford-based business owned by Chad Cartwright, to cut down the tree and for Orion Rental to donate the equipment necessary to move the wood, according to Woityra.

Cartwright said normally it would have cost approximately $2,000 to remove a tree that size.

He did it for free.

“I just felt that it was the right thing to do. I’ve got a couple young kids myself,” Cartwright said.

“We were there for about three hours,” he noted. “It was a big tree. It was huge. It was bigger than a 55-gallon drum around, that’s for sure.”

Elzerman used it to carve a new peace sign. “I wanted to make this one a little bit better than the last one, so I changed the design a little bit,” he said.

Woityra called it an “amazing piece of art.”

“It’s remarkable what he did with that piece of wood,” he said.

Woityra said the new one is bigger than the original. “The last one I could barely lift myself. This one I can’t lift myself,” he said. “It’s a lot thicker.”

“It’s about a foot taller,” noted Elzerman.

Elzerman, who has a daughter of his own, said he did this because he knows Woityra has “gone through a lot” between his daughter’s untimely death and the monument’s theft.

“He’s a good man,” Elzerman said. “He’s a good-hearted guy. He’s taking care of his granddaughter and he deserved a break.”

Nine months before she died, Taylor Beth gave birth to her only child, Lachlan.

The peace symbol sits on a bench in a special garden Woityra made as a tribute to his late daughter. He used rocks, woodchips and flowers to form the shape of a peace symbol.

“My daughter loved peace signs,” he said. “Every morning when I open my garage and walk out and look at it, it makes me smile.”

Woityra is extremely grateful to Elzerman, Guinn, Mr. Tree and Orion Rental for making this happen.

“I’ve just thanked them over and over,” he said. “It means the world to me. I can’t stop thanking them.”

Woityra noted his granddaughter, who will turn 4 in December, is happy to have the monument to her mother back.

“She was literally climbing all over it and I was snapping pictures,” he said. “She had a ball.”

Guinn hopes having the new peace symbol “takes away all the pain” Woityra has felt since the theft of the original.

“I just can’t understand why people do that stuff,” she said.

Elzerman believes the way everyone came together to do this for Woityra shows why the Oxford-Orion area is so great.

“I don’t think there’s a better place to live,” he said. “People are willing to help other people.”

“There’s so much crap going on in the world. All we hear is bad stuff. It’s nice to have something positive happen. I’m tired of listening to all the negative (news) when we should be talking about people coming together to help somebody.”

Elzerman is glad his friend has been “made whole again.”

“He gets to walk out there and have a good thought, instead of a negative thought,” he said.