The local nonprofit Louisville Rising held an informational gathering Saturday for a planned memorial in honor of pets lost in the Marshall fire.
The gathering was held at the Davidson Mesa Dog Park, one of the proposed locations for the art installation.
“This is where we’re hoping the city will accept the gift — it’s the Davidson Mesa, where the fire definitely tore through the community, and it’s next to the dog park, which is obviously a sweet location for celebrating our pets,” said Caleb Dickinson, chair of Louisville Rising. “It’s got a beautiful backdrop, and that’s why people come here — it’s a really popular site, and we don’t want the memorial to be tucked away somewhere.”
Louisville Rising has commissioned Michael Garman, a firefighter and artist from Colorado Springs, to create the installation. Garman helped the organization develop the concept, Dickinson said.
“The idea is a boulder with bronze animals around it, and on it, and playing with each other and the rock — all sorts of animals that were lost in the fire,” Dickinson explained. “Surrounding that concept with a brick patio, with those bricks being engraved with messages from families who lost their beloved animals, and hopefully benches.”
The organization aims to open the installation by the summer or fall of 2023 with a ceremony, he said.
Louisville Rising was created in 2020 to raise money for small businesses during the pandemic, and the organization expanded to include other initiatives that support students, teachers and the community.
“When the Marshall fire happened, here we are as a local 501(c)(3) who can just immediately turn around and start helping people, so we started raising money and put on a Marshall Fire Benefit Concert back in April, and one of the goals was to raise money for a pet memorial,” Dickinson said.
Around $17,000 dollars was raised for the art installation, but another $23,000 is needed to complete the memorial, he said.
Community members arrived at the gathering Saturday to learn about the memorial, and some had tears in their eyes.
Two Boulder Strong comfort dogs — Juno and Rodie — made their way around the small gathering and offered love to anyone who needed it. The dogs’ owners, Lisa Atallah and Sue Jackson, live near the dog park and experienced the terror of fleeing the Marshall fire, not knowing whether their homes would be destroyed.
“Friends that live closer to Davidson Mesa started calling us, saying, ‘there’s all this smoke coming across the mesa, and it looks really bad,’” Jackson said.
There was a line of vehicles heading out of the neighborhood, and Jackson remembers a fire truck driving through the neighborhood with a loudspeaker, warning residents to evacuate.
“Our panic level just went up,” she said. “We get on South Boulder Road, and traffic was just at a stop, and at that point you could see the smoke and the fire, and so that was an extra panic, like ‘we’re stuck in this traffic, what are we going to do if the fire blows closer?’”
The homes of both Atallah and Jackson were left standing, but many of their neighbors’ homes burned to the ground.
Now the two volunteers attend events with their support dogs to help their community heal.
“I can’t imagine people who couldn’t get back to their homes, and their pets were closed up in the house,” Jackson said. “What’s important about events like this is it brings the community together, and I think people need to talk about the experience that they had … and kind of come out on the other side with hope.”
