New bricks dedicated at Page Memorial Plaza

Posted

A ceremony was held at Page Memorial Plaza on Saturday morning to dedicate bricks that have been purchased by local residents to honor loved ones. 

Page Mayor Bill Diak led the ceremony, which was attended by about 40 people.

Diak, who helped design the plaza, explained that the purpose of selling the bricks was to help fund the memorial, where bronze plaques are displayed to honor service members “that had made an ultimate sacrifice to our region and area.” 

“The bricks themselves are to honor anyone that you wish – your wife for putting up with you … or someone that has passed, or someone that you just feel you want to honor. I thank you guys for doing that,” Diak said to the gathered crowd.  

He added that in the future, the city would try to hold such dedication ceremonies on a regular basis. “We’ll start ordering (bricks) like February so that we’ll have them and place them maybe on Memorial Day or something like that,” he said. 

The reading of the names on the new bricks was preceded by a prayer by R.B. Ward, a preacher from the Church of Christ in Page.

Among the new bricks were four that have been placed in a new area dedicated to those who have died from COVID-19. “We’re honoring them in a separate area on the front wall. Right now, there’s a few bricks there, but I will let you know that since COVID started that we have lost approximately 54 people from our area,” Diak said. “We will continue to add to that wall as a special area. Right now, we’ve got room over there for about 30. If we need to, we will expand that area here.” 

He said he wanted the plaza to be regarded as an area where people can walk through “and just have sweet memories.” 

The memorial is already visited by many people, he said, but he’d like to see more activity there. 

“When I’m sitting in the office, I’ll often see a crowd of people out here walking through this area,” Diak said. “This next year, we hopefully want to use the amphitheater from the other side again as we were in the past to have just little things going on that entice people to hang around.”