Demetros’ create interactive 9/11 memorial

Posted

Battle Ground sculptor Jim Demetro and his daughter Christina Demetro, now living in Anchorage, AK, co-created an interactive 9/11 Spirit of America Memorial. It was dedicated in Cashmere, WA, earlier this month.

The four bronze, life-size figures represent different races and professions: a military serviceman, office worker, flight attendant and fireman (with Battle Ground area fireman Todd Kays as the model).

The statues clasp hands, looking upwards towards the hope of a peaceful future. They also incorporate Jim Demetro’s idea of having the statues rise from the rubble with a rough texture transitioning to more details on their bodies, signifying rising above the challenges. Demetro included a gap between the statue’s hands for viewers to complete the circle. The empty space also represents the people who were never found.

John Jackson, the founder of the Spirit of America foundation and board member, Morgan Lindbergh started this Memorial dream in 2001. The Demetro sculptors traveled to the east coast the following year to choose a limestone cornice from the Pentagon rubble and one of the last steel beams from the World Trade Center Twin Towers before the artifacts were recycled.

While their subsequent efforts and sculpting time were not funded, they raised the majority of the money from family and friends to pay the Heart of the Gorge foundry to cast the clay statues in bronze, in time for the 10-year anniversary of 9/11.

Founder Jackson envisioned the Memorial to then be placed on the Olympia Capitol grounds after their 10-year moratorium for new memorials had passed. Instead, after many other cities and towns competed for it, the Memorial toured Washington state before being placed in its permanent location at the new Cashmere Riverside Center between Leavenworth and Wenatchee in the geographic center of the state.



This Sept. 11, chairman of the Memorial committee Tom Green estimated around 1,000 people joined the dedication, where the co-sculptors helped cut the ceremonial ribbon. Green also said there were over one hundred volunteers who helped create the Memorial site.

“It was impressive how people contributed,” Jim Demetro said.

The statues are now affixed onto a pentagonal shaped base. Surrounding the bronzes, Architect Robert Miller designed two airplane wing-like pergolas on six vertical columns, with plaques honoring each of the military services. A pear tree was also planted to represent the Survivor Tree found at Ground Zero.

The Spirit of America Foundation and the Memorial Committee now invite the public to visit.