Thanks to an anonymous donor, a memorial to the 13 people killed at Columbine High School will be completed this summer.
“It’s great news. It is going to be finished in July,” Don Fleming said Sunday. His 16-year-old daughter Kelly died with 11 other students and a teacher on April 20, 1999. The two teenage gunmen also died.
The memorial’s total cost, including donated labor and material, is $1.5 million.
Bob Easton, chairman of the memorial committee, would not say how much the anonymous donor delivered, but the memorial’s Web site still shows it short $167,000.
Memorial organizers chose to minimize publicity about the donation because it was made coincidentally on April 16, the day of the Virginia Tech shootings.
The memorial, on a hill above the school south of Denver, includes a stone Inner Ring of Remembrance with a station for each of the 13 victims. Parents and siblings of victims will be allowed to post remembrances of their lost loved ones on the inner ring. 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,” Easton said.
It has taken eight years to complete the memorial for several reasons. 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 were built. That cost $3.1 million.
Also, the original plan for the memorial would have cost $2.5 million but sponsors, competing with other world disasters, cut the budget.
More than 2,500 people have donated, including former President Bill Clinton. He came twice to Colorado to raise money, the second time writing a personal check for $50,000.