It’s been nearly five years since Sept. 11, 2001, and in Broomfield a memorial to victims of the terrorist attacks is set to be unveiled this year.
That is, if it gets finished in time.
The bronze statues and the relief panels set to be unveiled Sept. 10 at Community Park pond are complete. But the city still needs donations to pay for the concrete in which the statues will be placed and the lighting fixtures that will illuminate the panels – one for each site where a plane crashed that day.
“For a little while, we were concerned. But we’re 99.9 percent confident it’s a go,” said North Metro Fire spokeswoman Wendy Krajewski.
The memorial is a culmination of two years of fundraising by a committee that includes several members of the fire district, including Chief John O’Hayre, who had friends who died in the attacks.
The monument will be in a shady grove near Broomfield City Hall, not far from where Healing Field displays were the previous two years. The displays featured hundreds of flags that were sold to raise money for the permanent memorial. It will feature statues of civilians, firefighters and police officers involved that day.
Six-foot bronze plates depicting scenes from the Pentagon, the Pennsylvania field and the Trade Center towers will be placed in a wall nearby, with the names of those killed in each attack etched on the back.
The art was designed to promote reflection, said Albuquerque artist Reynaldo Rivera. In one of his statues, a fireman takes a break from removing rubble and leans on a piece of metal taken from one of the towers to pray.
“It’s a special place,” Rivera said. “I don’t want to get religious, but it’s a holy place for whatever you feel.”
The memorial will be a spot for Coloradans who were affected by the events to remember and reflect, even though the attacks happened hundreds of miles away, said Rosann Doran, Broomfield spokeswoman.
And the spot will be available all the time, not just on Sept. 11 anniversaries.
As the number of yearly memorial services continues to dwindle, people who want to mark the occasion are running out of places to go, Krajewski said.
“Each year, as the years have gone by, there’ve been less and less and less ways to honor (those who died),” she said. “This is it; this is their permanent place that they will have.”
Staff writer Alicia P.Q. Wittmeyer can be reached at 303-820-1316 or awittmeyer@denverpost.com.
