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Thursday, May 22, 2003 |
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Photo by: BETH BALBIERZ  Police officers bowing their heads Wednesday as the honor roll was read during the annual Bergen County memorial service for fallen officers. |
Two decades ago, David Boone saw Mary Ann Collura's zeal for police work up close - before Collura had even become an officer.
The two Fair Lawn police reserves were in a patrol car on a snow-covered road when they received a report of a large knife fight nearby. The regular officers were just beginning a shift at headquarters, a good distance away. So, with Collura driving, the two neophytes closed in.
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THE PRICE They say that the ultimate price is a life, A life that is lived for others! They say that the ultimate price can't be paid, Unless that life is given for others. The men and women that we honor here, Have all lived their lives for others! The men and women who served us in blue, Have given their lives for others! And so on this day we ever reflect, On those who have given their lives! They paid the price with their very lives, That safety might reign for others! |
A block away, Boone stopped her. They should wait for backup, he urged.
"Even in her 20s, she was willing to put her life on the line," Boone, now a Fair Lawn detective, said at the annual Bergen County memorial service Wednesday for officers who died in the line of duty.
Rain forced the event indoors at the Law and Public Safety Institute in Mahwah. Attending were, among others, Collura's family, Sheriff Joel G. Trella, Prosecutor John Molinelli, County Executive Dennis McNerney, and a few hundred police officers in suits or dress blues.
Collura, 43, was the first woman to have her name etched on the shiny, gray memorial outside the entrance to the academy. There are 38 names on the memorial.
An 18-year borough veteran and Fair Lawn's first female officer, Collura was fatally shot April 17 as she backed up a Clifton patrolman.
Moments earlier, Omar Marti had led Clifton Officer Steven Farrell on a car chase that ended outside a River Road church in Fair Lawn. As Farrell tried to subdue him, Marti pulled and fired a handgun, wounding the Clifton officer and killing Collura. Marti, who authorities said sold drugs and guns with his family, died days later in a shootout with police in Florida.
"A call for assistance from another department was all it took - Mary Ann was on her way," Fair Lawn Police Chief Rodman Marshall told those at the service, including Farrell. "She was killed by a piece of garbage masquerading as a human being.
"We'll never know who was saved because those drugs weren't sold or that gun wasn't bought and used by another criminal."
Throughout the hour-long service,
organized by the Bergen County Police Chiefs Association and the Bergen County Police Benevolent Association Conference, speakers repeated the annual wish that no new names ever be added to the wall.
But, given the nature of the job, they acknowledged that more names are inevitable - especially as officers assume new responsibilities in preventing and responding to terrorism.
"Hopefully we can go a few years without adding another name," Trella said.
A longtime borough resident, Collura attended Fair Lawn High School and joined the force in 1985, fulfilling her life's dream. She had attended William Paterson College and spent three years as a volunteer with the Fair Lawn Police Reserves before joining the Police Department.
Now a police chaplain, Boone recited a poem he wrote long before Collura's death. Among the lines:
They paid the price with their very lives
That safety might reign for others!
The playing of taps and a 21-gun salute were among the tributes at the observance, which has been held annually at the academy since 1965. As the service concluded, officers from a dozen police departments and other groups placed wreaths at the 7-foot-high memorial wall.
They returned to the auditorium, where officers from Fair Lawn PBA Local 67 showed Collura's mother, Helen, a memorial stone engraved with her daughter's name. On the verge of tears, Helen Collura pulled a black drape from the stone. Then she walked back to her seat in the front row alongside other loved ones.
The stone will be inserted into the walkway at the memorial.
Raghuram Vadarevu's e-mail address is vadarevu@northjersey.com