With the help of an anonymous donor, the memorial to the 13 people killed at Columbine will be completed this summer.
“It’s great news. It is going to be finished in July,” said Don Fleming, whose daughter, Kelly, 16, died at Columbine with 11 other students and a teacher on April 20, 1999.
“An anonymous donor came forward and pretty much wanted to close the gap and he did,” said Fleming on Sunday.
“We still need to collect some promised donations that has been pretty much done,” Fleming said. The memorial’s total cost, including donated labor and material, is $1.5 million.
The memorial, on a hill above the school, includes a stone Inner Ring of Remembrance with 13 stations for each victim and an outer ring. On the inner ring, parents and siblings of victims will be allowed to post remembrances of their lost loved ones. Others in the community, including the wounded, will put their thoughts on the outer Healing Ring.
“We all think it is going to be very nice and peaceful place to go,” he said.
Bob Easton, chairman of the memorial committee, declined to reveal how much the anonymous donor delivered, but the memorial’s Web site still shows it short $167,000. The donation was made the same day as the Virginia Tech shootings, and memorial organizers chose to minimize publicity.
It has taken eight years to complete the memorial for several years. First, victims focused their efforts on replacing the library at the school—the main killing field. The area was sealed off and a new library and atrium built. That cost $3.1 million.
The original plan was for the memorial was to cost $2.5 million, but sponsors, competing with other world disasters, cut the cost back.
More than 2,500 donated, including former President Clinton. He came twice to Colorado to raise money, the second time writing a personal check for $50,000.
