Foundation News I  March 26, 2014

Our amazing team of volunteers has been working diligently since September 2013 to unpack and sort all of the memorial tribute items – 283 boxes! They have made significant progress in inventorying, scanning and photographing each item that was placed at the three community-made memorial sites in January 2011.

Creating an inventory is an essential first step to determine a permanent home for these beautiful treasures. Some of the items will be formally archived for future research purposes, others will be transformed into artwork by artists and finally others will be donated to worthy non-profit organizations.

While it isn’t possible to thank everyone individually for their expressions of love, support and kindness, we do strive to honor these special materials as we work with them.

As our volunteer Liz Miller says, “I will never forget the incredible feelings of loss and helplessness that welled up as a result of what happened January 8.  When invited to take part in this project, I immediately knew this was for me.  I have been deeply moved by all the expressions of pain and hope and caring that the memorial items represent. Seeing and touching all of the things people took time to create and bring forward, and helping to categorize them, has been an amazing experience. I feel this project is a strong counter to chaos, and hurt and hopelessness that affected us all – it is helping to foster order and peace; it serves a testament to the resiliency of our community.”

Current volunteer projects focus on unpacking, sorting and entering descriptive information about artifacts or scans of artifacts into our online inventory database. If YOU are interested in joining our wonderful team of our archives inventory volunteers, please contact us at [email protected].