Memorials
A public memorial service for the fallen firefighters took place on Friday, June 22, 2007 at the North Charleston Coliseum in North Charleston. A procession of more than 300 fire engines, ladder trucks, ambulances, and command vehicles which stretched approximately 7.5 miles (12 km) long moved single file along a route which passed each of the three fire stations from which firefighters were lost as well as past the site of the fatal fire, while bystanders, police officers, and ATF agents paid their respects by saluting or holding their hands over their hearts. The procession then moved along Interstate 526 to the North Charleston Coliseum. An estimated 30,000 people, including as many as 8,000 firefighters representing over 700 emergency services agencies from around the country attended the gathering.
The largest of several funds established for the families of the fallen firefighters raised nearly $1.2 million to benefit the families of the fallen firefighters. This figure does not include an additional $100,000 donated by the Leary Firefighters Foundation, nor several other funds established since the incident. In addition, Sofa Super Store owner Herb Goldstein established the Charleston Nine Scholarship Endowment with a startup donation of $100,000, which will help defray the costs of college tuition for first responders and to children or dependents of both first responders currently serving and those who have lost their lives in the line of duty. Other shops and businesses around the city also accepted donations or contributed a portion of their sales towards the families of the fallen firefighters.
Numerous firefighters from the area accepted an offer from a local tattoo parlor, which employed a St. Andrews firefighter who escaped the collapse, to receive a free tattoo memorializing the lost Charleston firefighters. Firefighters were invited to choose from several memorial designs created specifically as remembrances of the lost firefighters.
Mayor Joe Riley announced on June 27, 2007, that the City of Charleston had reached a tentative agreement with Sofa Super Store owner Herb Goldstein to turn the site of the tragedy into a park with a memorial for the nine fallen firefighters. The following day, Riley proposed a second memorial be included in a planned, but controversial, county park. "It could be where every firefighter in the region goes for their picnic," Riley said. The second memorial has been criticized as a move to garner support for the county park project.
On March 25, 2008, it was announced that South Carolina state lawmakers had approved a bill to name a 3.6 mile stretch of U.S. Route 17 in honor of the fallen Charleston firefighters. The designated section, to be named the "Charleston Nine Memorial Highway", runs from the intersection with S.C. Highway 171 to Sam Rittenberg Boulevard and includes the site of the fire.
The Summerville High School basketball team, of which Captain Louis Mulkey was an assistant coach, was presented with a custom memorial fire helmet by the Charleston Fire Department. The team placed the helmet on the bench for each of the team's games in the 2007-08 season. Summerville went on to win its first-ever state basketball championship.
In 2008, the Coastal Carolina Council of the Boy Scouts of America sold a patch that commemorated the Charleston Nine.
Read more about this topic: Charleston Sofa Super Store Fire
Famous quotes containing the word memorials:
“My titillations have no foot-notes
And their memorials are the phrases
Of idiosyncratic music.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Our public monuments are memorials to the Enlightenment.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Let these memorials of built stone music’s
enduring instrument, of many centuries of
patient cultivation of the earth, of English
verse ...”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)