Following M-A football coach Dylan Taylor’s death in 2025, a bicycle, flowers, and pictures were left on the corner of Middlefield Road and Prior Lane in remembrance of him.
Last Thursday, the City of Atherton took down all items, leaving a sign posted that acknowledged the memorial’s purpose. The city cited its “right of way,” which gives it the right to remove objects deemed hazardous to the public, city manager George Rodericks explained.
Sign left on the corner of Middlefield Road and Prior Lane.
“The memorial was placed in the town’s public right of way, and so it was given a certain amount of time to stay there, and then we posted it to advise the people that have placed things within the public right of way that they needed to be removed by a certain date, and at that date, we removed them,” Rodericks said.
The decision to remove the memorial was made earlier in the year—around January—and the notice to the community was issued in February. “We didn’t really agree with what the sign said,” Kristy Roos-Taylor, D. Taylor’s mother, said. She and Michael Taylor, D. Taylor’s father, understood how the memorial could provoke strong emotions in people and distract drivers on the road, yet still felt it could have remained in place. “It kind of felt like they were erasing him,” Roos-Taylor said.
“I think that it was very beautiful. And I remember going there. It turned from every Friday, and then to every other week, and then I unfortunately stopped going as often, and that’s, you know, when they removed it,” sophomore Jaime Parada Hernandez, a player of D. Taylor’s team two seasons ago, said.
The memorial started with just flowers and pictures, and then an M-A teacher added a ghost bike, which players from the football team wrote on. “I think it did a good job of drawing attention to bike safety. And I did hear people say that it was good to see the ghost bike. It’s very sad, but it’s a good reminder,” M. Taylor said. “With Encinal right there, and all the students from M-A that go that way, I think it is important that they see that reminder.”
D. Taylor had a significant impact on the Menlo Park community, working as a paraeducator at Hillview Middle School and coaching many sports in the Menlo Park City School District and the Las Lomitas School District. He also helped coach the M-A freshman football team, building strong bonds and connections with students and parents. “I think if they had gone to the community, I think a lot of people would have [still] wanted it there,” Roos-Taylor said. “Especially the M-A students might feel like it disrespects them.”
“I think that it definitely should have stayed up. I think that the excuse that they gave that it was in like, public, right of way was, it’s just, it’s dumb,” Parada Hernandez said.
