Council member Lehi Pierce presented plans and a timeline for a memorial in Memorial Park honoring Hollywood Park’s founding volunteer fire department and firefighter Robert E. “Bob” Oakes.

Pierce told council the project, developed by a volunteer committee, will honor the department’s founders who served between 1958 and 1973 and will include inscribed bricks bearing the volunteers’ names, a bench dedicated to Oakes and a sign with a QR code linking to historical material. The council previously authorized up to $15,000 for the project; Pierce said contractors and suppliers delivered key elements and the project remains under that cap.

Committee members working on the memorial include Holly McBrayer, Debbie Johnson (architect/designer), Shannon Sims and Alverne Halloran, widow of Bob Oakes. The committee described outreach already completed to family members of the original volunteers and showed a mockup of the bench and brick layout at the triangle-shaped Memorial Park site. Pierce said the bricks are expected to be delivered the week before installation and the contractor has agreed to seal the paver area as part of the work.

Pierce and committee members asked councilors to attend a public ribbon-cutting planned for Saturday, Dec. 21, from 2 to 2:30 p.m. The presentation packet shown to council included archival materials such as the original volunteer patch, newspapers and a letter related to Oakes’s death in the line of duty. Committee members said the memorial is intended to preserve and make publicly accessible the history of the volunteer department through the QR-linked online material.

Mayor and council members thanked the committee for the year-long effort and noted the ceremony will be a public recognition of the town’s early volunteers.