A memorial honoring the four U.S. Coast Guard crew members who died when their rescue helicopter crashed in waters off Honolulu on Sept. 4 last year is expected to be done in time for the first anniversary of the tragedy.

The 25-foot circular memorial is to be placed near the airfield at Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point in Kalaeloa and is being put together with public donations coordinated by the nonprofit Coast Guard Aviation Association.

The group wants to raise $50,000 by April 14 and is doing so by selling engraved bricks to organizations and individuals through a Web site. The bricks will be used to line a 35- to 40-foot-long pathway to the memorial, said Lt. Dan Long, who is stationed at Kalaeloa and is helping guide the effort.

About $15,000 has been raised so far, Long said. The Coast Guard Foundation, another nonprofit dedicated to supporting Coast Guard personnel, has promised to help with the funding if the association doesn't meet its goal, Long said.

"It's a personal thing for us, and we don't want to ask for too much in handouts," he said.

The Coast Guard HH-6505 was conducting a training mission 5 miles south of Honolulu the night of Sept. 4, 2008, when the helicopter crashed in the water while delivering a rescue basket to a Coast Guard lifeboat.

The four men aboard were Commander Thomas Nelson, ,Lt. Commander Andrew Wischmeier, Aviation Survival Technician First Class David Skimin and Aviation Maintenance Technician 2nd Class Joshua Nichols. Nelson's body was never recovered

The memorial will also honor three U.S. Coast Guard crew members who died in January 1982 when their HH-52 helicopter crashed into a cliff during a search-and-rescue mission on Moloka'i.

A bronze plaque that honors those who died in the Moloka'i crash now sits in front of one of the station's buildings and will be relocated to the left side of the new memorial, Long said.

A similar plaque recognizing those lost last September will sit to the right, he said.

In the middle of the memorial, which was designed by Kalaeloa Coast Guard Lt. Dave Maccaferri, will be a bronze statue of a Coast Guard aviator helmet and boots, Long said. In front of the monuments will be a round floor with a sketch of a compass rose. Behind the monuments will be a lava rock wall, in tribute to Hawai'i.

To help defray the cost of the project, U.S. Air Force reserve units will help construct the memorial, he said.

The bulk of the work is expected to be completed by early May, with landscaping and finer details scheduled to be done by the end of August, Long said.

The memorial will sit in a field near the front of the Coast Guard station on Coral Sea Road. "Where the memorial is going to sit there will be a view of the ocean and of the ramp area where the aircraft operate," Long said.

More than six months after the crash, the roughly 240 Coast Guard crew members stationed at the air station still feel the void left by those who died.

"It's a real tight unit," Long said. "If they didn't know these guys personally through talking to them on a daily basis, they knew them because they passed them in the hallway. And we all fly together and work together on the aircraft."

Petty Officer Rob Norcott, 27, said he and others at the air station are still coming to grips with the loss.

Norcott said he and Josh Nichols were particularly close since both were flight mechanics who arrived at Barbers Point the same week two summers ago. Their wives were both pregnant at the same time and so they became close as well, he said.

"He and his wife were the first ones to visit us when my wife and I had our baby," Norcott said. "Four or five months later, they had his son."

Nichols was passionate and threw himself into everything he did and he liked making people happy, Norcott said.

The 20 to 25 mechanics and others who work in "the helo shop" are close because the crew is significantly smaller than the ones who work C-130 cargo planes. "It's a small shop in a big station," Norcott said.

"We're still missing (Nichols) today," he said. "We're moving on but there's still a giant emptiness."

An empty spot in the hangar represents where the 6505 would have been parked. In front of it is a full tool box with the helicopter's call letters.

The memorial will remind future members of the Coast Guard of the three core values of the service: honor, respect and devotion to duty, Long said.

"It will also serve as a reminder of the inherent danger of what we do because it's going to tell the story of what happened to these crews and what they were doing and, ultimately, what happened," he said.