By the ILoveOV.com Team
This Friday, September 11, marks 25 years since the attacks that changed the country. In Oro Valley, that anniversary will be marked the way it has been each year since 2024: at the Arizona Heroes Memorial, a 2.58-acre site at the southern end of Naranja Park built specifically to hold moments like this one.
The Memorial is hosting a 30-minute sunset remembrance beginning at 6:30 p.m. at 810 West Naranja Drive. “We gather to honor the lives lost, the heroes who ran toward danger, and the families forever changed,” said Vickie Shoopman, a director of the Memorial. “We remember their courage, sacrifice, and the unity that followed one of America’s darkest days.”
What to Expect
The ceremony follows a program built around reflection rather than spectacle. Memorial board member Steve Didio welcomes guests to open the evening. The Canyon del Oro High School Canyon Singers, under the direction of Ashley Sova, perform the national anthem, and Chaplain Det. Tim Fane offers the invocation.
From there, Memorial executive director Lisa Hopper introduces the man whose vision made the site possible: founder and chair Dick Eggerding. Eggerding leads the moments of silence and the ringing of a bell to remember those lost, a ritual that has become the emotional center of the evening each year it has been held.
A Memorial Born From One Man’s Vision
Longtime ILoveOV readers may recognize Eggerding’s name. Our two-part profile earlier this year, “A Garden of Knowledge” and “Building the Blank Canvas,” traced his more than three decades of civic work in Oro Valley, from co-founding the Greater Oro Valley Arts Council to helping write the town code that funds public art. The Arizona Heroes Memorial is, in many ways, the culmination of that work.
Eggerding first envisioned a memorial honoring veterans, first responders, and healthcare workers in 2015. Standing on the Naranja Park plateau with the Santa Catalina Mountains behind him, he reportedly said it would be the perfect location. It took nearly a decade of advocacy to secure the land and build the site, which officially opened in November 2024. At that opening, Eggerding put the memorial’s purpose simply: it exists to honor not only those who have already given their lives, but those still willing to.
Attending Friday’s Ceremony
The event is free and open to the public. Organizers describe it as a solemn, family-appropriate gathering rather than a large public festival, so arrive a few minutes early to find parking and seating before the 6:30 p.m. start. The remembrance runs about 30 minutes, ending as the sun sets over the Catalinas.
For Oro Valley residents who were adults on September 11, 2001, this anniversary marks a quarter-century since that morning. For the town’s younger residents, many of whom were not yet born, it is a chance to understand, in a very local setting, why that day still matters here.
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