Built on Town Green by TV show
BILOXI - The memorial to Hurricane Katrina victims on the Town Green will be unveiled this evening at a candlelight vigil.
Producers of the Emmy-nominated ABC television show "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" conceived the idea and teamed up with locals and city officials to make it happen.
Footage from the work will be part of an hourlong show set to air on ABC in March or April.
The group has been in town filming this week, and has undertaken three projects. In addition to the memorial on the Town Green, the crew converted an office on Division Street into a medical clinic. ABC also threw a party on the beach across the street from the Town Green on Monday night for Staff Sgt. Jerod P. Murphy, a Gulfport-based Marine who drove an amphibious vehicle during the storm and helped pull roughly 200 people to safety in Biloxi and Pass Christian.
The memorial will include mementos from locals, who on Monday donated their treasures to the producers of the show.
The site will have benches to create a solemn environment, according to a news release from the city of Biloxi. Dennis Cowart, an architect from Ocean Springs who was involved in the Camille memorial, designed the monument.
The memorial will be 12 feet tall, designed to represent the height FEMA said the storm surge reached on the Town Green.
"It's an honor for Biloxi and the Mississippi Gulf Coast to be selected for these community projects," Mayor A.J. Holloway said in a news release. "But the thing to remember is, at the end of the day, once the TV folks and nationwide coverage are long gone, the people of this community will have these positive endeavors for generations to come."
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