Trail named after Daniel Yakovleff in Ashford, CT

I'm rarely moved to tears by a newspaper column these days but Peter Marteka's feature on Daniel Yakovleff's father, Nord, and his quest to memorialize his 20-year-old son in today's Hartford Courant hit me on a deeply emotional level.

As many of my readers know, Yakovleff was brutally murdered in a Savin Hill apartment in Dorchester last January and his alleged killer, Steven Odegard, who he met at the Eagle bar in the South End is currently incarcerated awaiting trial scheduled for Tuesday, Feb. 5.

In the piece "Memories of a Beloved Son," Marteka follows the grieving father down a snowy trail through Ashford's Josias Byles Sanctuary.

According to the column:

"In November, using the more than $4,000 donated to the trust in Daniel's memory, a trail was named in his honor. A plaque where the preserve's main trail splits off bears Daniel's name along with his birth and death dates. It was placed on a huge boulder Nord Yakovleff brought from the neighboring Boy Scout camp property."

Click here for Marteka's beautifully written column and here for the backstory on the Yakovleff investigation.