Memorial to Ag students unveiled in TSC

Becka Turner

n.march20.unveiling.turner

By Becka Turner
News Senior Writer 

    A memorial built to commemorate the lives of eight Utah State students and their instructor who died almost four years ago, was unveiled in a ceremony followed by a reception Wednesday.
   The individuals that the memorial honors were killed in a van accident Sept. 26, 2005. A memorial was given at the time but the sculpture will help the memory of the accident victims to perpetuate, said Stan Albrecht, president of Utah State University.
    Those victims were Steven D. Bair, 22, of Moses Lake, Wash.; Dusty Dean Fuhriman, 22, Tremonton, Utah; Justin W. Gunnell, 24, Wellsville, Utah; Justin Huggins, 22, of Bear River City, Utah; Jonathan Dennis Jorgensen, 22, of Peoa, Utah; Curt A. Madsen, 23, of Payson, Utah; Ryan Wayne McEntire, 22, West Point, Utah; Bradley G. Wilcox, 26, of Salt Lake City, Utah and instructor Evan Parel Parker, 45, Hooper, Utah.
    Albrecht, Vice President for Student Services Gary Chambers, Perry VanSchelt, Mark DeGraffenried and Daniel Bolt of Monument Arts spoke Wednesday prior to the monument’s unveiling.
    “Students approached faculty and insisted the monument be built,” Bolt said. “It was a concentrated team effort, not just with our team, but with the Utah State committee.”
    Braden Jensen, ASUSU senator for the College of Agriculture, said, “The unveiling was a good representation of how the student body and the university feel.”
    Bolt said Monument Arts was selected to design the memorial by a committee made up of USU faculty. Bolt said he was grateful to have been able to participate in learning about each of the individuals and the memorial was an act of celebrating life.
    The monument was designed by a team of artists involved with Monument Arts. Daniel Cummings designed the granite background, which has a silhouette of the Wellsville Mountains. DeGraffenried, a USU alumnus, sculpted the steel panels, each of which represents a certain agricultural aspect of the victims’ lives, Bolt said.
    “The monument is 7 feet tall and 20 feet wide. It weighs over a ton and each panel weighs 85 pounds,” Bolt said.
    Dan Cummings, who did the granite work for the memorial, said he wanted it to represent the victims’ passion for higher education and for achieving future goals.
    The memorial contains a bronze rubbing element where individuals can make a paper rubbing to take as a remembrance. Many family members of the deceased have already done so.
    “The bronze rubbing was designed to be interactive in nature and to be used. It’s a way individuals can have a personal interaction with the memorial,” Bolt said.
    DeGraffenried spoke of how he tried to tailor each panel of the monument so it was a true representation of each individual. He also told many stories of working with the family members.
    “Dusty Fuhriman had a love for farm machinery. His dad first looked at the panel and said, ‘That’s a Gleaner. Dusty hated Gleaners,’ so we changed it to a John Deer, and it’s a better-looking piece of machinery,” DeGraffenried said.
    Of another panel including a sculpture of a hog named Penelope, DeGraffenried said Madsen’s parents felt it conveyed their son perfectly.
    “It was a good portrayal of him. When his dad saw it he said, ‘That’s our Curt, and that’s Penelope,'” he said.
    DeGraffenried expressed his appreciation and said it was an honor to have helped design and sculpt the monument.
    He said sculpting could be used as a metaphor for life, particularly in the case of the victims and their families. There is an ideal that is set for certain experiences in life, and DeGraffenried said often times it turns out quite differently than it had been pictured.
    Noelle Cockett, dean of the College of Agriculture, said she thinks the memorial is stunning.
    “I will come to this room again and again because of the beauty of the memorial and the feeling of peace that comes from it,” Cockett said.          
    Van Schelt said the unveiling was an emotional experience and said he was honored to have participated.
    “This was a very emotional experience and a wonderful opportunity,” he said.
    Albrecht said the accident was a tragedy of the Utah State family and anyone involved in the tragedy would be forever changed.
    “We lost nine friends that day,” Albrecht said. “We have learned lessons of courage, strength and endurance. Through this experience I have gained more honor and pride in being a Utah State Aggie.”
    Chambers echoed the same message by expressing the sense of compassion that helped create a feeling of community at Utah State when the tragedy occurred.
    “Thousands came (to the memorial in 2005) but didn’t know them, many cried … our community family lost nine of its members,” Chambers said.
    The memorial was made with the purpose to remind current students of those who lost their lives and to tell their predecessors of the lives of those involved and of the tragedy, Cockett said.
    Albrecht said the monument is important as a tangible reminder of the lives of those killed in the accident.

LC