By Brian Newsome
The Gazette (Colorado Springs, Colo.)
Copyright The Gazette
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Colorado Springs has been chosen as the permanent home for a national memorial honoring emergency medical service workers who die in the line of duty.
As the memorial’s home, the city will host an annual service to honor the memorial’s newest names. Design plans and fundraising will now begin, and the move is planned for 2010.
The National Emergency Medical Services Memorial’s Tree of Life honors 350 paramedics and other EMS workers, including 12 Coloradans, who have died in service.
The dangers of firefighting and law enforcement are well known, but emergency medical workers often find themselves in similar peril.
People with names engraved on the Tree of Life’s leaves include those who have been struck by cars while helping crash victims, fatally shot while helping shooting victims in violent neighborhoods, or killed in plane or helicopter crashes during medical flights.
The Springs was one of three finalists out of 14 cities that expressed interest in the memorial. The other finalists were Kansas City and the Washington, D.C., area.
The memorial will stand near Prospect Lake in Memorial Park through an agreement with the city of Colorado Springs, said Tawnya Silloway, spokeswoman for American Medical Response in Colorado Springs.
The Tree of Life memorial was housed in the To the Rescue Museum, in Roanoke, Va. That museum, a history museum for emergency medical workers, announced in 2006 that it was closing, which prompted the National EMS memorial service board to begin a two-year search for a site of its own.
The memorial will be in the same park as the International Association of Fire Fighters’ Fallen Fire Fighter Memorial wall at Memorial Park. A memorial to honor fallen law enforcement officers in the region is planned for America the Beautiful Park, and fundraising is under way.
Each year the EMS service to honor the names added to the memorial draws a few hundred people, Silloway said. Those services are planned at First Presbyterian Church downtown.