The 2023 Police Memorial Ceremony set for Thursday evening will include the unveiling and dedication of the newly remodeled memorial monument, which has been in the works since last summer.
The event, set to begin at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the memorial, located beside the Garland County Sheriff’s Office, 525 Ouachita Ave., will include a history of the memorial by Sheriff Mike McCormick and feature District 7 Justice of the Peace Dayton Myers as the keynote speaker.
Retired Hot Springs police Sgt. Kenny Kizer along with several of his friends spearheaded the effort to create a new memorial at the site with the idea for the project really coming together shortly after the May 2022 ceremony, which was the first they were able to hold in person after two years of cancellations due to the pandemic.
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HSPD Cpl. Brent Scrimshire, the last name on the memorial, was killed in the line of duty in March 2020 and GCSO Deputy Courtney Kizer, Kenny Kizer’s wife, said COVID prevented them from holding the ceremony in May so “we just had to go to the family’s home and the next year the same thing,” noting they delivered flowers both years to the families of all the fallen officers.
“When something impacts you so close to home you really think about how can we make something better to show our gratitude to the families?” she said. “That’s what really kind of got the passion of redoing it going and Kenny had bigger ideas than I did and he just ran with it.”
Kenny Kizer noted it took almost two years to get Scrimshire’s name added to the memorial. “There wasn’t a lot of room left on the stone that was there. I felt like if we’re going to do something we need to just go ahead to the extreme and remodel the whole thing. Do a complete makeover. So that’s where we went,” he said.
He approached two of his “buddies,” David Orrell, with Dave Orrell Masonry, and Bao Nguyen, with Stone World Design, and “both said they would be more than willing to help and it went from there. It was mainly me and Dave, but I talked to Bao about the granite and he said, ‘We’ll figure it out,'” he said.
Orrell reached out to Scott Hamby and Kizer reached out to Gary Bennett with Bennett Brothers Construction who between them donated the rock on the wall, Kenny Kizer said, noting, “Every bit of it had to be cut by hand with a rock saw and then the rock exposed on the outside had to be hand chiseled. Every piece is cut and hand-chiseled. So there was a lot of hours spent before it even got laid, in labor and time just on preparing those rocks to put in the wall.”
He noted he and Orrell have been friends for over 30 years and he was the one who actually designed the new monument, which features black granite with white raised lettering because “we wanted it to be eye-catching. That’s what those guys deserve.”
He said after talking to Orrell initially they met up at the old memorial one day and “within two days he sent me a picture. He went home and designed and drew it out what he wanted or what he thought would look really good there. He does a lot of high-end work in (Hot Springs Village) and a lot of extravagant fireplaces. He’s a really good stonemason.”
Kenny Kizer said he presented Orrell’s sketch to McCormick and Under Sheriff Jason Lawrence and then got it approved by former Hot Springs Police Chief Chris Chapmond and the assistant chief at the time, current Police Chief Billy Hrvatin, along with County Judge Darryl Mahoney and the FOPs from the HSPD and GCSO “because they are actually over the memorial” and “they all gave me their blessing.”
“We went through the whole process, starting in June (2022) and we started laying the rock in April, poured the footings and got all that done,” he said.
He noted the old monument is “actually right behind that piece of granite” but the names of the fallen that were on metal plaques have been removed. Those will be presented to the families at the memorial ceremony.
“The only bad thing about (the new memorial) is there’s a lot more room for names now and I hope they never have to use it,” he said. “But it’s there in case they need it.”
Courtney Kizer said the plan is to also install a lion on top of the monument just like the one on the national law enforcement monument once they get the funding. She also noted the Garland County Master Gardeners “will be coming in and taking care of the flowers” and HSPD Sgt. Mike Brown would be doing the electrical work for the lighting.
Kenny Kizer said there will be lighting to illuminate both the monument and the flag which will automatically turn on after dark on the same timer “like the rest of the lights” at the sheriff’s office.
Courtney Kizer said Tri-Lakes Ornamental Iron Works also donated a bench that sits in front of the monument so family members and others can sit while visiting.
In addition to McCormick giving the history, Hrvatin will serve as master of ceremonies, Lawrence will do the Hero’s Roll Call of fallen officers, Hot Springs Village Police Chief Kristy Bennett will oversee the placing of the wreaths, Kevin Green from the Garland County Detention Center will do the invocation and HSPD Chaplain Bryan Smith will do the benediction while his wife, Karen Smith, the HSPD’s administrative secretary, will perform the national anthem.
As for the choice of Myers as keynote speaker, Courtney Kizer said, “He’s always been very supportive of law enforcement. This area in general is blessed to have him and he makes a great speaker on something like this.”
Kenny Kizer said he’s very proud of the new memorial, noting, “I don’t think there’s another one that can touch it in the state of Arkansas. I think it even surpasses the one that’s in Little Rock right now at the state memorial. They’ve been talking about redoing that one, too. I feel like that one right there will be second to none and those guys are very deserving whose names are on that wall.”
He said he wanted the families “to know their heroes weren’t forgotten. To be able to do this is just humbling and I want to thank the guys that stepped forward, the businesses in this town, who stepped up to make this happen.”
Kenny Kizer said David and Alice Orrell “stepped up tremendously” donating the time and paying their workers to come out there and were “one of the biggest contributors to the success of this wall.”
The full list of donors includes Dave Orrell Masonry, Patriot Auto Body, Driven Wrecker Service, Scott Hamby, Bennett Brothers Construction, Zach Lacy Construction, HSPD Sgt. Mike Brown, Wholesale Electric, Stone World Design, Overton Trenching, Fountain Lake Monument, Tommy Humphries, Tim and Brandi Stockdale, ABC Block, Spa City Ink, Hot Springs Sod and Turf, Rick Morphew, Arkansas Cycle World, Tri-Lakes Ornamental Iron Works, Extreme Pools and Falls and Normans Florist.
Retired Hot Springs police Sgt. Kenny Kizer, left, and David Orrell, behind the old monument, work on the remodeling process to install a new law enforcement memorial at the Garland County Sheriffs Office, 525 Ouachita Ave., which will be unveiled Thursday. – Submitted photo