 The City of Portland has partnered with several local businesses to erect a monument to Portland's fallen firefighters. Brian Knoblock talked with Deputy Fire Chief David Jackson about this tribute to Portland's bravest. Chief Jackson, what's the background for this monument? Well, certainly, as you can see, there's 20 names on this monument. There's 20 firefighters in the Portland Fire Department's history that we know of and documented that lost their lives in the line of duty. The idea kind of started in 97-98 with retired Deputy Chief Larry Libby. He was a lieutenant here at the time at Central, and then he was also captain here. He kind of came up with the idea of a concept about something on the west lawn, more of a moral than just the plaque we had in the building. And then in 2008, we really got a more formal committee going and realized certainly the first challenge was the fundraising. But the fundraising has gone well in the last few years, and as you can see, it's come to fruition. We're glad to see it's here. Like I said, we raised a little over $32,000. There's still some money coming in, and certainly donations can still be made. And there's going to be a lot of cool things for Saturday, so we're looking forward to that day. The location of this monument has a lot of history with the Portland Fire Department. It does. The history of this location, certainly this location in general that the stations are now is actually a city park. But right where we're standing, where the monument is built, in the past, there's been three other fire stations right here. Several times burned in the Great Fire, but they rebuilt here, and then the station is now the fourth station that's been at this location. So it's really kind of fitting. A lot of the names that are on this monument were men that worked in the stations that were here, and all of them at some point in time in their careers worked here at Central Station. And you did have a lot of companies, a lot of local companies that contributed to the monument. We did. We had, most of all the businesses certainly were all $1,000 or more donations. That was just a huge help. And we even had on the day of groundbreaking last fall, we had several individuals here that day, writing checks, personal checks to the fund. Yeah, so it's been, the fund raising has gone well in the last few years. And what are the elements of the memorial here? What are the different parts? Well, we wanted to first kind of create a setting that, you know, certainly anybody could come here. Like we had talked earlier, there's two more black granite benches that will be here. But a kind of a little place that was in the park, again here in the West Lawn, is perfect for it to be quiet, a place of reflection. Somebody could sit here and visit, certainly visit the memorial. So we created this area with the brick, the brick lays, the granite flower beds, the granite benches, and certainly the black marble monument with all the names on it. And the other items that are on here, plus the three flag poles, I think it says it all. The official dedications on Saturday the 28th, and you're looking to get as many people as possible for this turnout. Is that right? That's correct. I know we had over 150 on the groundbreaking. And we are anticipating at least 350 plus close to 400 on Saturday the 28th. We've sent out over 450 invitations. We still have a few that are going out on those last minute people we don't want to forget. And then certainly to help get the word out through the news media, I'm sure we'll even have more people to comment. We're trying to also take this time to reach out to any Portland firefighter that's retired from the department or any family member of that firefighter who maybe has passed away to get back in touch with us. If they aren't already in our database of contacts. Any time we have events going on or things going on like this that we have a way to reach out to them. And we really want hopes that they'll have the opportunity to get back in touch with us to get into our database. There are over 200 current firefighters in the department. Is there a big sense of history within the fire department reaching all the way back to 1768 when the department began? Well certainly the city of Portland is, you know, it's typical old eastern seaboard city as the United States grew. So the history is just the city alone is tremendous. And the fire department again as you mentioned 1768. Yeah we have a lot a lot of history in the Portland fire department and we've been able to maintain that. Our museum down on Spring Street, a lot of departments have come firefighters from across the country visited our museum and they're very amazed by the history of what we've been able to preserve in our museum as well. So this is one more big piece for that. And what are the details again for the dedication? We're going to that morning the ceremony basically will be obviously presenting a colors national anthem. There'll be some speeches. We'll also be doing a reading on each firefighter that lost his life in the line of duty. The other thing that's too in the program is we're going to be announcing a remembering and preserving our past by bricks are going to be available for retired firefighters and family members to buy a memory of firefighters. You could buy a brick and have it engraved. And then part of that brick program would be bricks in front of the museum as well. And the fundraising from that is going to be maintaining the account to preserve all the memorials, mostly this memorial here. And then some additional funding from that fundraising will also continue to support the museum. Again preserving the history of the Portland fire department.