The debate about naming a playground at Ronan Park in honor of the late 11-year-old Maryann Hanley who was murdered in the park on Aug. 11, 1983, brought me to think of Tiffany Moore.

She was 12 when she was murdered by cross gunfire with the Castlegate gang on Aug. 15, 1988. She was sitting on a mailbox at the corner of Humboldt Avenue and Ruthven Street, three blocks from Franklin Park.

Some years later, I led a petition drive to name a playground in Franklin Park after Tiffany, and it was very warmly received, especially by her mother Alice, who died in 1995.

Tiffany Moore’s murder was a terrible experience for the whole Humboldt, Seaver, and Grove Hall neighborhood; it was a terrible experience for Boston, too. In the late 1980s, Grove Hall and Elm Hill Street were caught in the grip of the crack epidemic. Cops in black would prowl around the Playstead in Franklin Park with rifles looking for suspects and dealers. There were lots of sirens.

Nobody was ever caught and/or convicted of Tiffany’s murder, although a bunch of suspects were known, so there was closure for no one.

In those days, I directed the Franklin Park Coalition, an organization that I revived and founded from 1975 until 1987. The only line of respect for that great park in those days was the original Coalition in coordination with the Parks Department, but neither had a lot of money to spend on the facility.

The Humboldt Avenue tot lot opposite Talk of the Town barbers and Berea Church was a run down, circa 1961, playground, and in 1985 I helped raise $20,000 to renovate, repaint, and improve it. Parks Commissioner Bob McCoy cut the ribbon on July 26, 1986.

And then two years later a 12-year-old girl – Tiffany Moore– was killed three blocks away. This was personal for me.

Raising money for Franklin Park was never easy back then. The common excuse from funders was that “nobody goes there.” Nevertheless, the Coalition did raise money for the Tot Lot, and then Tiffany is murdered. It felt like ten steps back.

When I heard in 1992 that the Parks Department was going to redesign and rebuild the Tot Lot, I thought it should be Tiffany Moore’s playground – that it should carry her name.

I got up a petition drive to name the playground after her, and the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association was a great help in getting the community involved. Tiffany’s mother and her sister Audrey were happy about it, too.

A lot of names were collected – pages and pages - and we took it to the Parks Commission for approval on Nov. 29, 1993.

“I think we need positive ways to remember Tiffany,” I said at the hearing. “I had tried for five years to find a way to commemorate this child. Now the park is a safe place to go.”

The Parks Department put up a wooden sign with Tiffany Moore’s name on it two weeks later.

A new $400,000 playground was designed and built and on July 12, 1995, Mayor Tom Menino cut the ribbon. Also, there that day were then-Reps. Gloria Fox and John McDonough.

“The real tribute today is when we say we’re not going to forget Tiffany’s death,” Fox said.

Today, 28 years later, when you walk into the Tiffany Moore playground – redesigned and rebuilt in 2011 by the Play2Dream Foundation as a gift to Franklin Park – you will walk over a reminder that will never go away - a circular granite plaque that reads: ‘Tiffany Moore Playground.’

Richard Heath, a 50-year resident of Forest Hills, is the director of the Franklin Park Coalition. He writes for the weekly Boston Bulletin.