Mourners by the hundreds remembered Dr. Darren Bean and Steve Lipperer for their kindness, skill and humor Thursday, and then the bells tolled for them. Bean and Lipperer, along with nurse Mark Coyne of Waunakee, died Saturday when their Med Flight helicopter crashed near La Crosse.
A tear-stained gathering of 1,500 people watched the memorial procession Thursday evening from the Monona Terrace Convention Center rooftop. Madison police vehicles, several fire vehicles and a fire truck held off traffic on Wilson Street and Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard to make way for the two white hearses.
At least 100 uniformed men and women from Med Flight, the Madison Fire Department, Madison Police, the Dane County Sheriff’s Office and emergency medical services lined up along the bridge to the rooftop, where they stood for more than an hour as friends, family, colleagues and many others whom Bean and Lipperer touched arrived to honor their dedication and their lives.