Palm Bay to revamp Sacrifice Park monument to honor Brevard's fallen first responders
The 15-foot triangular brick monument at Palm Bay's Sacrifice Park stands sentinel to the victims of the city's horrific 1987 mass shooting — including two police officers — and their fellow Brevard County law enforcement officers who have died in the line of duty.
Now, Mayor Rob Medina has dedicated a second consecutive Mayor's Ball fundraiser to rehabilitate and revamp aging Sacrifice Park with a taller obelisk, black granite memorial walls, benches, multi-color lighting and landscaping.
Every year, on the anniversary of the tragic April 23, 1987, shooting rampage that claimed the lives of Palm Bay police officers Ronald Grogan and Gerald Johnson, city police conduct a solemn ceremony. Officers walk a flowered memorial wreath from the police headquarters to the nearby Sacrifice Park pyramid in front of Franklin T. DeGroodt Public Library.
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"We had Officers Grogan and Johnson that were killed in the line of duty. The city of Palm Bay was just 27 years old. In our infancy," Medina told a Greater Palm Bay Chamber of Commerce crowd last month.
"I truly believe the blood that was shed on that fateful day is part of the foundation of our city," Medina said.
"It is my mission to create, to assist in building, a monument worthy of that sacrifice," he said.
Saturday, Medina will host Palm Bay's annual Mayor's Ball at Hilton Melbourne Rialto Place to raise money for the Sacrifice Park improvement project. Ticket sales closed Tuesday. Last year's ball generated more than $30,000 for architectural renderings. Palm Bay officials are accepting donations at the city website.
City officials have since commissioned PlaceCreation, an Ocala landscape-architecture-planning firm, for conceptual design and construction bid services. Construction estimates range from $240,000 to $250,000, said Christina Born, city spokesperson.
The 1987 gunman, William Cruse, 59, killed six people and wounded 14 while randomly shooting at people with a semiautomatic rifle between his Creel Road home and a pair of nearby Palm Bay shopping centers.
Cruse was later convicted of six counts of first-degree murder and numerous lesser offenses. He died on death row in 2009.
Sacrifice Park was constructed in 1995 by the Palm Bay chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police and volunteers. The memorial was originally erected to honor Grogan, Johnson and Cruse's other four shooting victims: Nobil Al-Hameli, Enud Al-Tawakuly, Ruth Green and Lester Watson.
The expanded monument's scope will recognize fallen first-responders from across Brevard. Artist's renderings of the upgraded Sacrifice Park depict a 16-foot triangular obelisk atop a granite base, surrounded by black granite-clad memorial walls bearing engraved names.
The triangular obelisk's sides will represent the three categories of first responders — law enforcement, firefighters and EMS personnel — near a 25-foot-tall flagpole.
"The creation of a new monument signifies the importance of properly remembering the ultimate cost paid by our fallen officers. Modernizing this monument reflects the significance of their memories and ultimate cost paid by these officers with their lives," Palm Bay Police Lt. Michael Roberts said in an email.
"The Mayor’s intention for improvements to Sacrifice Park is to provide for a memorial that adequately honors those law enforcement officers killed on that fateful date in April 23, 1987, but also to serve as a memorial for all first responders, countywide, killed in the line of duty. These brave men and women paid the ultimate sacrifice protecting the communities in which they serve," Roberts said.
Medina highlighted the Sacrifice Park project in his Feb. 8 "State of Palm Bay" speech during a chamber breakfast at the Florida Institute of Technology's Center for Advanced Manufacturing and Innovative Design. He said the memorial will set a tone for relatives of Brevard's fallen first responders.
"Ten years downrange, their children, their grandchildren, their families will say Palm Bay truly never forgot the sacrifice that was laid on their foundation," Medina told the chamber audience.
Rick Neale is the South Brevard Watchdog Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY (for more of his stories, click here.) Contact Neale at 321-242-3638 or rneale@floridatoday.com. Twitter: @RickNeale1
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This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Palm Bay Sacrifice Park to get revitalized to honor first responders
