El Paso Florist heading to Uvalde to help with funerals

EL PASO, Texas (KTSM) – An El Paso florist will head to Uvalde Texas on Wednesday to help the two flower shops as they make flowers for the the funerals following elementary school mass shooting.

“There’s nothing that we can make – flower-wise – that would ease any parent from that great loss so what plan to do is go and represent El Paso and just keep doing the beautiful things that we can for each family out there,” said Liza Marquez the owner of Flowers By Liza in El Paso.

Marquez said she knows firsthand how overwhelming it can be preparing for funerals following a mass shooting as she made arrangements for the Walmart shooting victims in El Paso. Even more so for a community like Uvalde that she says only has two flower shops.

“Here in El Paso, we have a large community we’re a lot of florists and we were still overwhelmed with orders. So, imagine a 16,000 community with two flower shops and an entire country is looking at them and wanting to send flowers,” said Marquez. “We’re going there just to help them in whatever and having the knowledge that we’ve already gone through this hopefully we can guide them out of this.”

The owner of one of the flower shops in Uvalde, Yolanda Moreno finding comfort in knowing Marquez has been through something similar.

“We can learn from her also the grieving process too how it affected her and how it’s going to affect us later and what to expect,” said Moreno.

Moreno thanks everyone who has reached out and volunteered to help as she says they expect to be making bouquets for funerals for the next three weeks.

“All the good that people still have in each other and everybody coming together and showing the love that we need at the moment,” said Moreno.

Marquez is to leave early Wednesday with a team from El Paso with supplies, but it will only be the first trip. Saying the shops said this week they needed manpower, isles, and baskets among other supplies to make bouquets, and next week they need more flowers.

A different flower shop could be seen stopping by Liza’s flowers the day before the trip to drop off more supplies. Marquez says it’s a time for everyone to come together.

 “We (florists) all deal with the beginning birth and the end death for all of us to unite and come together and say you know what this isn’t about you and this isn’t about me, this is about the children,” she said.

While all of those going are volunteers, Marquez says once El Pasoans started to hear about their plans they started reaching out wanting to help pay for gas and accommodations.

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