Ceremony offers glimpse of memorial
By JONATHAN BILYK
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jbilyk@chroniclenewsgroup.com
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| The memorial for the five students killed Feb. 14, 2008, at Northern Illinois University, will include a curved walkway and five cardinal red granite markers. Each marker will be engraved with the name of one of the students. (Rendering provided) |
DEKALB – Tolling bells sounded a solemn anthem Saturday as hundreds of people gathered on the campus of Northern Illinois University and then walked to the site of a future memorial that will honor the five students who died in a lecture-hall shooting last year.
Led by NIU President John Peters, NIU Board of Trustees Chairwoman Cherilyn Murer, Gov. Pat Quinn, U.S. Rep. Bill Foster, and the families of the five victims, more than 500 people from NIU and the surrounding community gathered quietly at
3 p.m. Saturday to remember the fallen, a year to the day after the attack.
Stepping off from Holmes Student Center, the NIU administrators, elected officials and families of the victims carried a wreath, one each in honor of the five victims, along a path lined on both sides by hundreds of onlookers, through Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Commons and across a bridge over the Kishwaukee River to Cole Hall.
Room 101 of Cole Hall is where a former NIU student opened fire shortly after 3 p.m. Feb. 14, 2008, killing five people and injuring 21 before taking his own life.
As the procession moved, the only sounds were the tolling bells, the whistling of the wind and the stamping of hundreds of pairs of walking feet. They stopped at a temporary representation of a memorial garden planned to be built along the river, just southwest of Cole Hall. Wreaths were quietly laid at markers bearing the names of each of those killed.
Later this spring, the university will begin work on a permanent monument to the students killed that day. The memorial garden will include five red granite markers, each 4.5 feet tall and 10 feet wide, arranged in a semicircle along a walkway.
The markers will each bear the name of one of the five victims, as well as one of the words from the phrase “Forward, Together Forward,” a phrase pulled from the NIU Huskies fight song that served to galvanize the community in the weeks after the shooting.
The garden will feature more than 20 newly planted dawn redwood, white oak and evergreen trees, as well as benches. A sculpture also will be there, the theme and subject of which will be decided in coming months.
Michael Malone, vice president for university advancement at NIU, said the garden is the result of months of work by a 40-member advisory committee, made up of NIU faculty, staff, students, alumni and other NIU community members. The committee reviewed more than 200 submitted ideas.
“It was decided that we really wanted something within sight of Cole Hall, and we wanted a place where people could just stop, sit and reflect,” Malone said.
He said memorial planners consulted with families of the deceased before deciding to place the names of the fallen on the granite markers.
“At the time, we didn’t know if the family wanted the names of their children on this, forever,” Malone said. “But they said they wanted a space that not only encouraged contemplation, but that also served to remember these five people.”
The memorial, which could be completed later this year, is expected to cost about $150,000 and will be paid for through private donations, according to NIU officials. The DeKalb and Sycamore communities, through their respective Chambers of Commerce, have already raised $66,000, according to NIU officials. The NIU Alumni Association contributed $15,000, and gifts from other individuals have increased the donations to about $120,000.
After laying the wreaths Saturday, school officials, elected leaders and the relatives of the five victims stood quietly until the bells stopped tolling. Others then slowly and quietly filed along the memorial to pay their respects.
DeKalb resident Herb Kuryliu said the memorial and ceremony were fitting tributes.
“These have been difficult moments for this school and the community,” Herb said. “But this will be a beautiful way to remember when it’s completed.”
How to help
To donate to the permanent memorial that will honor the five students killed Feb. 14, 2008, at NIU, call 815-753-1626.
