‘We Do It For The Families’: Oklahoma Couple Honors Fallen Law Enforcement Officers

It is National Police Week. An Oklahoma couple has dedicated their lives to a memorial honoring fallen law enforcement officers. They want families to know their community has their backs. 

Behind every name engraved into the granite stones at the Oklahoma Law Enforcement Memorial, there is a story.  

“Eight hundred and seventy-five officers honored on here,” said Dennis Lippe, who has organized the memorial since 1986.  

“That’s been a passion of ours for so long,” said Karen Lippe, who has also organized this memorial alongside her husband. “We started working on it 38 years ago, on planning it.”  

Dennis is a human encyclopedia when it comes to the memorial.   

“The oldest officer on here is eighteen forty-five,” Lippe said. “The Cherokee tribal officer John M. Brown, 1845.” 

If a person finds a name, he’ll tell them their story.  

“Through these stories, you know it’s like we know these officers,” Lippe said. 

Lippe said these benches are here for people to sit and take in peace, and honor the names listed here. Some of these people Dennis knew as a police officer himself. Dennis and Karen do it because they don’t want their memories to fade with the wind.  

“We do it for the families,” Karen Lippe said. “We wish we didn’t have to.”  

Every year names are added to these stones.  

“We actually honored a K-9 as well today,” Karen Lippe said. 

This year they added 14, Karen wishes it was zero.  

“There’s no way I could ever know the hard ache that they’ve gone through,” she said. 

People with families left behind, but the memorial is where their memory lives.  

“It’s calming, I think is a word I like to use. Peaceful,” Dennis Lippe said. 

Stories are forever preserved because Dennis and Karen chose to write them down.  

“Our hope is that our survivors know that they’re loved, and they’re not left alone,” Karen Lippe said.