Man and Reef

(Photo from stonegrovememorials.com site)

I am, in fact, a memorial sculpture freak. I haunt cemeteries wherever I go and am sometimes so moved by the sculptures I see on graves that I actually sit and comtemplate the dead under them. But today I learned about a memorial that seems like a plot for a fairytale. I'm amazed it hasn't been done before.

In 2001, a fireguy by the name of Peter Firehock was murdered in Del Ray, Fl. He'd been active in the Fire Department for around 20 years and was also an avid diver. So avid, in fact, that he'd started the area Fire/Rescue Dive Team. His teammates were devastated and at least one member of the community, a guy by the name of Christopher O'Hare, was touched to the core.

Now this guy O'Hare (son of a fireguy himself) is the owner of a place called Stone Grove Memorials, which makes small monuments to contain the cremains of people's loved ones. But he and his crew had it in them to transcend their usual limits and he proposed an appropriate monument to the dead fireguy.

On Friday, the monument, which is a 3 ton representation of a diver swimming over a reef, will be sunk 90' under the water at the Governor's River Walk Reef in Palm Beach County. With its haunting white surface and plaque which says of Peter, "May he rest in peace where the seas are calm, the water is clear and the marine life is plentiful", the piece contains plenty of nooks and crannies for fish to live and is made to withstand the daily wash of the Gulf Stream. It will, in fact, be an active part of the reef itself. So the man who explored the reefs becomes part of the reef.

Sounds like the plot of a fairytale....