North Providence Councilman Paul Caranci discusses the engravings of former Fire Chief Stephen Catanzaro and police commissioner Frank Bursie, shown above, that were removed from the Evans Park monument.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

NORTH PROVIDENCE — A decision by Mayor Charles Lombardi to remove the likenesses of two of the town’s former public safety officials from the town’s 9/11 Memorial has drawn outcries from several members of the Town Council, who want the mayor to restore the engravings at his own expense.

The 7-foot-high monument in Evans Field was installed and dedicated two years ago by the town’s then-mayor, A. Ralph Mollis, who is now the secretary of state. Until a week or so ago, the granite slab included, among other things, the likenesses of then-Fire Chief Stephen Catanzaro and Frank Bursie, who was serving under Mollis as a police commissioner.

Councilman Paul Caranci said he and four of his colleagues — Mansuet Giusti, Frank A. Manfredi, John Fleming and council President Joseph S. Burchfield — found out only after last week’s 9/11 ceremony that Lombardi had ordered the monument “defaced” to remove the images of the two men who had worked for his political rival.

The etchings were literally buffed away and, during last week’s ceremony, replaced with two laminated insignias from the New York City Police Department and Fire Department that were held to the monument with an adhesive strip. However, the central image, that of a young boy reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with an eagle perched on his shoulder, remained unaltered.

Councilman Fleming, who served under Mollis as his chief of staff and now serves as one of Mollis’ deputies in the secretary of state’s office, said he viewed the move as one more attempt by the Lombardi administration to “eliminate from history” anything remotely connected to the prior administration.

Caranci went further, saying that had any anyone else done what Lombardi had done, he would have been arrested for defacing public property. Caranci, who serves as a deputy to Mollis in the secretary of state’s office, said Lombardi should be held “legally accountable” and be forced to pay the bill to restore the original design.

But Lombardi said he won’t change it back, saying the 8-by-10-inch engravings should never have been on the monument in the first place.

“I think Mr. Caranci misses the point,” Lombardi said. “This is supposed to be a memorial to the rescue workers and others who paid the supreme sacrifice with their lives in 9/11. It’s not meant to honor people who are still living and breathing and who still have the opportunity to be home with their wives,” Lombardi said.

The mayor and his chief of staff, G. Richard Fossa, said they only recently became aware that Catanzaro, who walked away with a $104,000 in unused vacation and sick time when he retired as fire chief late last year, half of which he later had to give back, and Bursie, who still works at Town Hall in charge of special projects, had been used as “models” for the monument.

Lombardi said he first learned there was an issue when many of the firefighters he had invited to the ceremony turned him down.

“I asked, ‘Why aren’t you coming?’ They said to me, ‘Did you ever see the monument?’ They saw it as a joke.”

Lombardi said that when he and Fossa went to see the monument, he couldn’t believe his eyes. Lombardi said, “What’s this?”

Were these images of people no one knew, it might have been different, he said. “But we’re a small town, so, of course, people would know who they were.”

Lombardi says he and Fossa thought they could order up a quick replacement by asking New York City firefighters and police to supply a picture of actual people who died, but New York said no.

“They said so many people died [that] it would be wrong to have them represented by two individuals,” Lombardi said. “They recommended that we used special police and fire insignias, which is what we intend to do.”

“No disrespect to either Chief Catanzaro or to Frank Bursie, but their pictures did not belong on that monument,” Fossa said.

“This is not a political thing. I don’t think anyone viewing that monument is going to say, ‘I don’t think this monument has the same effect now that those two pictures are missing.’ The only complaints I’ve heard are from our political opponents, who still don’t believe they lost the last election.”

Sculpted by Anthony Longo, of North Smithfield, the monument includes pieces of rubble collected from the World Trade Center site by North Providence Firefighter Joseph Colannino who traveled to New York in 2001 to assist in recovery efforts.

It is based on a winning design submitted by Ashley MacLure in a contest in the spring of 2005 at North Providence High School. She is now an illustration major at Rhode Island School of Design, Providence.

MacLure said yesterday that she hadn’t known about the controversy over the monument but felt “relieved” by what Mayor Lombardi did.

“My initial design was very different from the one the town put up,” MacLure said. “[The Mollis administration] definitely twisted it around to make it something it wasn’t.”

MacLure said her concept was very simple: a life-size statue of a young boy with an eagle perched on his shoulder as he recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

“My concept was to allude to the freedom and the future of America, and to get people to think, not to hit people over the head with an image of the World Trade Center or words from President Bush,” she said.

As for the two images of Catanzaro and Bursie, MacLure said they were never included in her design. Those, she says, were added by the sculptor and by former Mayor Mollis without any consultation with her.

“They put into it what they wanted to put in,” she said. “They added extra junk that didn’t have to be there. I think they should have had faith in the audience to figure it out for themselves. While I was very happy they had chosen my design, I was hurt by what they did to it. You could see it was a rush job, and I was totally disappointed by the outcome.”

Informed yesterday that the mayor plans to replace the engravings with an insignia from the New York police and fire departments, MacLure said, “That’s cool.”

According to Lombardi, Bursie ended up becoming one of the models for the monument because Police Chief Ernest Spaziano refused to take part. “Frank is not a police officer, but they had him put on a police hat.”

Lombardi said he had heard that Catanzaro’s wife was extremely upset when she learned that her husband’s image had been removed and had burst into tears, but that he had not spoken with the chief or his wife personally. He said Bursie, who serves at the pleasure of the mayor, didn’t say much, except, “I wish you had told me in advance that you were going to have it removed.”

rdujardi@projo.com