There's a fresh look honoring men and women who have given their lives to protect our communities in Allegheny County and it's all thanks to the efforts of a father and son who saw something wasn't right, and it was made right by a retired police officer and two amazing companies. Watch the video on this page to see it all come together.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hey guys, Patrick with GetMarty. I am at the Allegheny County
00:04Fallen Law Enforcement Officers Memorial on the North Shore.
00:07If you remember the video I did a couple months ago, I was riding my bike past
00:12here along the river trail and I noticed along the back side of
00:15this wall, all of the letters were not in great
00:19shape, and in fact about half of them were
00:21missing. So today we've got new letters,
00:26the old ones have been refurbished, and the crews from Rome Monuments, they're
00:32out here, and we're going to talk to the owner
00:35John Dugardia here momentarily, and you know we'll see how they're doing
00:40this, tell you how all this came together.
00:43And look who we have here, this is Donna Best.
00:47Donna, tell us who you are. Well my name is Donna Best, I am the President of the
00:51Law Enforcement Officers Memorial here on the shores of Northside and
00:55Pittsburgh. And you're also a retired commander with
00:57the Sheriff's Office too, right? I'm a retired commander with the Sheriff's Office. I'm a
01:00surviving spouse of a line of duty death, my husband.
01:03I'm the President of the Pennsylvania Chapter
01:06of Concerns of Police Survivors. So this has a heck of a lot of meaning for you
01:10doesn't it? This is so important, it's not just
01:12important to me, it has so much, my heart, my heart's breaking because it's
01:16so excited and thrilled and
01:19thankful, I'm so thankful. I'm thankful to
01:21Marty Griffin, I'm thankful to Matthew Meadows, I'm
01:25thankful to Rome Monuments, I mean this would never have
01:28happened. I'm thankful for you because you reported it to Marty.
01:32You know I was riding by here with my son that day and
01:35noticed that some of the letters were missing and it was pretty tarnished
01:39and that got the ball rolling. Absolutely. And oh my gosh and they're over here
01:43doing the work now. I mean how cool is this? It is so awesome
01:47seriously, all these new letters and the older letters that are so plain now,
01:51and even the seal which was a previous issue
01:56but the seal is all cleaned up now too.
02:00It's wonderful and we even have the Sports and Exhibition Authority over
02:03here today is going to help us with some of the
02:05shrubbery issues that we have. That's amazing and this is this all
02:09came together what in about two months? Two months,
02:11yes, two months and it's awesome. The whole Longfootman Community
02:15Building in the county is very thankful for this. This is
02:19beautiful. Hey if people want to help out, I know you do take donations to
02:22support the memorial and everything you do for the families,
02:26how do folks reach out to you guys? You can reach out to the L.E.O.M.
02:30on our Facebook. We have a Facebook and a law enforcement office, Memorial
02:35County of Allegheny. We accept checks, cash, whatever you want
02:39to give, we'll take it. We have to maintain this monument and it
02:43costs money and then we have a memorial service every May
02:46for honoring those police officers that were killed in the line of duty
02:50and it's an important issue and unfortunately
02:53we had to add two names last year and I hope to God we don't have to
02:57add any names next year. Amen. Yes. Well I'm gonna go check in with John
03:02over here. Looks like they're they're working their
03:04way pretty quickly too. Yes they are, thank you.
03:07All right, John D'Agardia, L.E.O.M. Monuments.
03:10Brother, you guys are working your tails off over here. We're trying right now.
03:15You almost caught me saying something I would have might have regretted on the
03:19air here. I had a little difficulty with this
03:22but no, things are going pretty good. We've got a couple little issues to
03:26overcome and hopefully we can get everything done
03:29today. That's the goal. This is beautiful. These
03:32letters turned out amazingly. Oh that's all Matthews. Honestly,
03:36they are tremendous. The bronze piece as well that they did
03:42is amazing. Yeah, so what they did they took the original letters and
03:46refinished all of them and then they had to replace was it
03:50four of them? Four, that's right. Four letters that were
03:52missing entirely. Now the finish on all these look exactly the same
03:57so that's the nice thing that you would not guess
04:00which ones were old and which ones were new.
04:04So that's a good thing that they were able to do.
04:07These are made of aluminum and they oxidize.
04:15So they need some love from time to time. Yeah,
04:20it does work. Good, good, good. We had an issue with the O's.
04:27We have four of them on this memorial and we have to find which one fits the
04:32original holes. We just found two of them. We knocked
04:36two of them out down to the final two of the O's.
04:39Nice.
04:42How long do you think the whole job is going to take? Two more hours.
04:46Wow, I'm hoping. We're concerned about that afternoon rain.
04:51Well yeah, from the tropical storm Debbie. Yeah,
04:54it may start and you were with me. It got cloudy a little bit ago
05:01and we were a little concerned then but it passed and now
05:06unfortunately the humidity set in and it's uncomfortable.
05:10But the sun's up, the epoxy should be working its magic. Yep, it's a five minute
05:16epoxy. That's quick. Yeah, it's a fast dry so
05:22that's all good. What Bill is doing inside the holes
05:26is what I'm doing on the outside, on the inside.
05:30He's drilling to make sure the depth is right
05:34and then he's also epoxying the stem into the wall.
05:39Drilling and filling. Yep, originally these were all silicone only
05:43which won't last. All right, well brother we are so thrilled
05:49that you guys were able to help us out with this.
05:51Well, I'm glad you were with us here at the end because
05:56I wasn't feeling good. Weather started to impact us as you saw
06:02and knew. We wanted to do this yesterday and unfortunately we're a little
06:07little bit worried about the dampness that was in the wall.
06:11The day before was a torrential rain and we know what's coming tomorrow.
06:19All right brother, well I'm gonna get out of your hair and let you guys do your
06:21thing. Oh, we will. Take care. Can you stop that?
06:25All right, check it out. How freaking beautiful is that?
06:34That looks absolutely amazing. Thank you Rome Monument.
06:42Matthews.
06:45Wow. Now if you need help or you see something that
06:48needs some love, give us a shout. GetMarty at KDKRadio.com.
06:53You can also send us a message on X, on Facebook,
06:57anywhere you can find us.