Columbine Memorial to be dedicated at park Sept. 21

Alan Gathright, Rocky Mountain News

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

The dedication of a long-awaited memorial for victims of the 1999 Columbine tragedy will be Sept. 21.

The Columbine Memorial Committee announced today that the dedication ceremony will take place at 4 p.m. in Grant Amphitheater at Clement Park, where the one-acre memorial is rising between two hills.

The park is adjacent to Columbine High School, where two student gunmen killed 12 classmates and a teacher before taking their own lives.

"We are genuinely pleased to be in a position to set the long-awaited dedication date," committee chairman Bob Easton said in a statement. "This will be a public dedication, focused on the Columbine Community and honoring the victims of the Columbine shootings, their families, faculty and students."

The construction is 85 percent complete on the $1.5 million memorial, the group said.

An inner Ring of Remembrance will include 13 stations, one for each of those killed by the gunmen. Messages from the victims' families will be etched into the ring's stone walls.

An outer Ring of Healing will display the engraved words of injured victims, other Columbine students, teachers and staff, and members of the community.

Funding for the memorial project has been raised through donations from more than 3,000 individuals, corporations and non-profit groups, the committee said.

A Denver firm, DHM Design, designed the project; construction has been coordinated through services donated by Lakewood contractor Pinkard Construction Inc.

Some volunteers are still being sought for landscape planting on Saturday, Aug. 4. Additional information on the planting day and the memorial is available at www.columbinememorial.org.