Cherokee Village woman uses tragedy to serve community

Rhonda Moore a resident of Cherokee Village was roused by the sound of knocking at her door. It was nearly midnight and she knew the news would not be good when she opened her door and saw police. This night in October of 2017  would change her life forever.

“She was 23 when she died. She’d been attending school at UCA studying to be an elementary school teacher. She was one semester away from graduating. She loved children and animals. She was very giving, very caring. She had gone on two mission trips to Haiti. She was very involved with a group on campus and with her local church that she went to,” Moore said, reflecting on her daughter Amanda’s life.

Moore explained while Amanda was  in college she became part of a group which she said she later learned was not what they appeared to be.

“The local group that she was involved with turned out to be a cult. They separated her from her friends and her family. And then when she needed them, they wouldn’t come,” Moore said. “As a matter of fact, the leader of the group told Amanda that they were all taking a step back from her for a while so that she could experience what life was like without God and community.”

Moore said the group’s plan was that her daughter would return to them broken and even more dependent, but instead, Amanda took her own life.

While learning how to navigate her life after the loss, of her daughter Moore said many things transpired, leading herself and others to new projects to raise suicide prevention awareness.

“Originally, we had set up a scholarship fund in her name as a memorial for our local college that was in Forrest City, Arkansas. That’s where we lived,” Moore said. “That’s where she attended community college, but they were not awarding the scholarship as often as we had hoped they would. We wanted something lasting.”

Toward that end Moore said she created a series of memorial benches in Cherokee Village where she has resided since 2009.

“I’d made a presentation to the Suburban Improvement District (S.I.D) about allowing me to place a memorial bench in Papoose Park,” Moore said. “Originally, I was going to just do one, but I saw on Facebook, someone posted some pictures of the existing benches saying they were in bad shape so I told the S.I.D I would do two more.”

The plan was approved in June of 2025 but had taken several months to complete due to construction and a series of natural disasters.

Moore used that time to expand her plans and order additional benches.

“I was warned that it would take a while because of all the rain that we were having and everything else, but that was okay because I needed to order the benches and get them delivered and inspected,” Moore said. “We eventually got the first one installed in October of last year.”

There are now three benches in the park.

“All three of the benches have plaques on them and at the center of each is a memorial plaque, it mentions The Mandy Foundation. A good friend of hers when she was in college was just devastated when she died and his name is Josh Sisco. He started an official federally recognized nonprofit,” Moore said. “It is TheMandyFoundation.org and it’s to help people who are considering suicide, who are very depressed and there’s even a special section on the website for first responders, because until she did this, he was going for law enforcement. After her death, he switched over and became a therapist and started this nonprofit in her honor.”

When asked why she chose the park, Moore said she had many happy memories shared with her daughter there.

“I chose the park because we spent a lot of happy hours climbing up and down that waterfall. The first time that I went to see the bench after it was installed, there were children on the swings and the mom was sitting on the bench that I had had installed,” Moore said. “I gestured, can I sit here and she nodded and I sat down and I was just enjoying the waterfall and listening to the children laugh. And while I was sitting there, she gathered up her kids and they all went trooping up and down the waterfall, and it was just, it was exactly what I had intended.”