WEST WARWICK -- The winter wind sends a can tumbling across the empty parking lot. The sign that once identified this small patch of earth as a place for fun is gone.

Journal photo / Frieda Squires

An engraving of Sandy and Michael Hoogasian, who both died in the fire, at the site of the former Station nightclub fire.

The spot devoted to Sandy and Michael Hoogasian abuts the pavement, near where they parked their car on the last day they drew breath. A plastic jack-o’-lantern peers up at a lone visitor this morning. A kaleidoscope shares space with sunglasses. Photos of the couple hang from the arm of a wooden cross. They are smiling in every one.

Six years ago, on Feb. 20, 2003, the Station nightclub fire in West Warwick sent Sandy and Michael and 98 others to their graves. Six summers have passed since then. The living have celebrated six Fourths of July and six Thanksgivings. Babies born in 2003 are now in school. High school students have graduated college or found adult employment.

Here at the site of Rhode Island’s greatest tragedy, our Ground Zero, the memories endure.

But the mementos, these traces of people consumed in a holocaust that lasted just minutes, have no such power.

Folding chairs placed alongside some of the memorials are badly rusting. Ball caps once worn by the deceased are rotting, their colors faded, their materials tattered. The 114 Teddy bears and stuffed animals remaining at the site are similarly fated. Here in New England, the elements offer no forgiveness.

And the crosses, one or more for each of the 100 –– the crosses suffer, too. Most are made of wood, whose enemy is weather. Paint peels. Some crosses are missing arms. Some have fallen over, gravity winning.

At the base of the Hoogasians’ cross, a loved one has left a black stone tablet. The lyrics to a favorite song are engraved on its surface. The tablet has cracked, but the words remain. Together as One, played at their wedding, begins:

Now is the time

That we stand together as one

A new light inside us will shine

As bright as the sun

Let’s bring, bring in with the new

And do away with the old

A new love, a new love that’s true.

********

The grass at East Providence’s Gate of Heaven Cemetery is neatly trimmed. No trash litters the graves. Even the plastic flowers appear fresh. Here, souls are revered.

Sandy and Michael Hoogasian rest under a polished granite marker beneath a maple tree, leafless until spring. “Together as One,” the marker reads. “We’ll shine bright through all eternity. Michael, 1972-2003. Sandy, 1975-2003.” They were young, and just 16 months married, when smoke and flame transformed an evening of fun into hell.

Claire Hoogasian does not often come to see her son and daughter-in-law; her parents and sister are buried here, too, and cemeteries in general leave her uneasy. They evoke endings, which is not what she wants to remember.

She wants to remember only things before the night of Feb. 20, 2003, but that, of course, is not possible.

“There’s never closure. It never goes away,” Claire says, speaking from her Providence home. “They were all taken away from us in the blink of an eye.”

Sandy and Michael left no babies.

“People say, ‘Aren’t you glad they didn’t have children?’ No, I’m not glad they didn’t have children. I would be able to hold part of them in my arms if I had grandchildren.”

Claire does not like cemeteries, but she would visit a proper memorial site.

“If I could just have a place to go,” she says. “A nice, quiet area where you could just go and be with them.”

Such a site has been designed, and the design is uplifting. It calls for the Station Fire Memorial Park to be built where broken crosses and rotting Teddy bears now mark Rhode Island’s worst hour. The park will have a stream, a pool, a bridge, paths, 100 small gardens, memorial steps and a meeting house. A place, according to the Station Fire Memorial Foundation’s web site, www.stationfirememorialfoundation.org, “to honor, to gather, to celebrate, to pray, to support, to educate and to remember.”

Dave Kane, who lost a son in the fire and is now the foundation director, says that labor and materials have been pledged to realize the plan. But for legal reasons, that cannot happen until civil lawsuits filed by victims are settled.

“It’s taking so long,” Claire Hoogasian says. “I know they have to go through a lot of red tape, but it just seems like everything’s being swept under the rug.”

*******

The winter wind rattles wind chimes, sending forth a haunting sound. A walk through the Station site, on the very patch where the club once stood, confirms fresh connections amidst the decay.

A box of chocolates and a Valentine’s day card signed by “Mom, Dad and Jonathan,” have been left by the memorial to Rebecca Shaw, who was 24. A poem by “little sister Kimberly” hangs from a cross memorializing Kelly Vieira, 40. “I miss you more and more with each passing year,” the poem begins. “Your love and your laughter I’ll hold forever dear.” Balloons in memory of others dance in the air. Candles have been recently lit

The wind rattles the photos of Sandy and Michael Hoogasian that bedeck their cross. The eye is drawn again to the tablet, to the lyrics to the song they heard when they wed:

A love that’s never cold,

A love that never dies

A love that fills our souls

A love that survives.

Noon approaches. The sun warms the face, a sign that even after a bad winter, spring will come.

For more on the Station fire and its aftermath, visit:

http://www.projo.com/extra/2003/stationfire/

http://www.myspace.com/stationfirefriendsunite

http://www.stationfamilyfund.org/

http://www.stationfirememorialfoundation.org/

http://www.angelsofrhodeisland.com/

http://www.41themovie.com/, about one of the fire's victims

gwmiller@projo.com