Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Campaign Kickoff is June 6 at WPI
May 31, 2005
Contact: Link McKie
(617) 373-8324
(617) 373-8773 (fax)
l.mckie@neu.edu
WORCESTER, Mass. – The Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Committee is hosting the Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Campaign Kickoff Monday, June 6, to welcome the Worcester community and others to its campaign to create Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Park. The kickoff also marks the initiation of the memorial committee’s formal fund-raising campaign for the memorial park.
The community-forum event will take place at 8:30 a.m. Monday, June 6, at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 100 Institute Road, Worcester.
The campaign will raise money to establish Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Park at a site near the Worcester Fire Department’s Grove Street headquarters on scenic Salisbury Pond across from Institute Park. The park will honor the six Worcester firefighters who died valiantly fighting a fire Dec. 3, 1999, at Worcester Cold Storage and Warehouse Co.
Dr. Dennis D. Berkey, president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute, will be the keynote speaker at the campaign kickoff. Also speaking will be Worcester Fire Chief Gerard A. Dio and Denise Brotherton, whose husband, Paul, was among the six firefighters who died in the fire.
Worcester Mayor Timothy Murray, Worcester City Manager Michael O'Brien, and David Forsberg, president of Worcester Business Development Corporation, will be special guests.
A video depicting the history behind creation of the memorial park and the plans for its establishment will be shown for the first time publicly at the event. “This event for our community marks the end of a three-year effort to create the most fitting memorial to our six fallen heroes, and to bring to Worcester a world-class memorial park to not only honor them but to enhance this city we all love and that they served so well,” Michael J. Donoghue, chairman of the Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Committee, said.
“This community gathering also marks the beginning of a two-year campaign to raise the money to build the memorial park and to endow its future -- as a memorial, as a superb adjunct to Institute Park, as another gateway to all that Worcester has to offer, and as an educational resource for generations to come,” Donoghue said.
A scale model of the winning design for Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Park will be on display at the community forum. The design features a monument with six encircled columns leaning toward each other and shooting shafts of light into a common point in the night as the centerpiece of the seven-acre memorial park. The design by Gala Simon Associates Inc. of Watertown, Mass., was chosen by a blue-ribbon jury from among five finalists in a national competition for the right to design the $3-million to $5-million memorial park.
Members of Worcester’s business, civic, cultural, religious, education and political communities have been invited to attend the campaign kickoff, as have members of the six fallen firefighters’ families, Worcester firefighters, and fellow firefighters from elsewhere in Massachusetts. A continental breakfast will be served.
The Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Committee began working in late 2001 to establish a memorial to honor Firefighters Paul A. Brotherton, Timothy P. Jackson, Jeremiah M. Lucey, James F. “Jay” Lyons III, Joseph T. McGuirk and Lt. Thomas E. Spencer. They died Dec. 3, 1999, trying to save the lives of others in an abandoned warehouse off Route 290 near downtown Worcester. Their deaths were the worst loss of firefighters’ lives in more than 20 years in a building fire in America, and the third worst fire in Massachusetts’ history.
Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial Park will be financed through a public fund- raising campaign. Donations to the memorial can be made to Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial on its Web site, http://www.fallen-heroes.org, or by mail to Worcester Fire Fighters Memorial, 34 Glennie Street, Worcester, Mass. 01605. More information about the campaign and the memorial park can be obtained at the Web site, http://www.fallen-heroes.org.
NOTE TO EDITORS: Press coverage of the campaign kickoff is invited. Accommodations will be made for satellite trucks to be located near the Odeum Room in Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Student Center, where the event will be held, and for other needs of the news media. Please contact Link McKie at(617) 373-8324 or at l.mckie@neu.edu with any requests.
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Last modified: Jun 01, 2005, 15:39 EDT