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Eagle Mountain • "If I close my eyes, it's a moment ago that it happened."

That thought occurred to Nanette Wride when she woke up Friday morning to hear volunteers pounding flags in her front yard to honor her husband, Sgt. Cory Wride, on the first anniversary of his death.

The day before Cory was gunned down while on patrol in Eagle Mountain, Nanette was riding with her husband in his Utah County sheriff's cruiser, "on a hot date."

"The next day he was gone," Nanette Wride said through tears while standing next to a sign unveiled Friday marking the city's newly named Cory B. Wride Memorial Park. "It just doesn't seem like it could have been a whole year. But yet, I made it a year — when I couldn't think that I could make it one breath or one step or one day. And then pretty soon it grew to two days and then three and then a week.

"To be able to do a whole year is just so healing and it gives me hope for the future," she said.

Cory Wride was killed Jan. 30, 2014, while sitting in his patrol vehicle after stopping to check on a pickup truck that had pulled over with its flashers blinking on State Road 73 between Eagle Mountain and Cedar Fort. Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui, 27, fatally shot Wride, and later shot and wounded Utah County Deputy Greg Sherwood. Later that day, Garcia-Jauregui suffered fatal wounds in a shootout with other officers near Nephi.

Scores of law enforcement officers, local and state officials, friends, family, schoolchildren and city residents gathered Friday in the muddy field that is set aside to become a park of soccer fields, playgrounds, and community spaces, according to plans released at a ceremony to pay tribute to Cory Wride.

"This is a place where someday an awful lot of joy and happiness will be had," said Eagle Mountain Mayor Chris Pengra. "That's what we look forward to, and that's what Cory would enjoy as well."

Nanette Wride announced another community effort in her husband's honor: a foundation she started to raise money to bullet-proof police car windows.

Through the Utah Code 4 Foundation, named after the radio calls made to check on officers on duty, Nanette Wride hopes to equip 115 vehicles used by the Utah County Sheriff's Office; the Draper Police Department, whose Sgt. Derek Johnson was gunned down while on duty just months before Wride's death; and the Carbon County Sheriff's Office.

Cory Wride was killed by gunfire that came through the windshield of his car.

"We're trying to work with lawmakers ... so that we can get this a mandatory thing. So that our officers are protected throughout the United States," Nanette Wride said. "It's ridiculous that they're not."

Bullet-proof windows and a bullet-proof driver door will cost about $6,000 per vehicle, Nanette Wride estimated. Donation links and more information are at UtahCode4.com.

At Friday's ceremony, the Pony Express Rodeo Committee gave $1,000 to the cause. Nanette Wride wept as school groups from Mountain Trails Elementary gave her family more than $800 they had raised to help them travel to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C. Another group from Ranches Academy presented thank-you letters and drawings to the family.

Utah County Sheriff Jim Tracy offered his own thanks to Cory Wride.

"Rest assured that your honor and your courage can never be challenged," Tracy said.

ealberty@sltrib.com