In the small garden, her sculptured face is smiling. Her hair is coifed and frames her face warmly. Surrounding her are white roses, small plants and a few large trees providing a canopy of shade or shelter from the rain. Aside from a couple of crows cawing in the distance, it is peaceful and quiet.
The plaque beneath her reads: Dora Menchaca, PhD. Scientist, Mother, Wife, Colleague, Mentor, Friend. Much Admired, Greatly Missed.
And there is one more inscription on the plaque: September 11, 2001.
The memorial bust of Dora Menchaca was sculpted by artist Thomas Marsh after she was one of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Amgen file photo.
Menchaca was 45 years old when she boarded American Airlines Flight 77 leaving Washington DC headed home to her husband and children in Los Angeles that day. She had been in the nation’s capital as Amgen’s director of clinical research doing a briefing for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on cancer research and wanted to catch an early flight home to get back to her family.
Like thousands that day, however, she never made it home. Her plane was hijacked and was slammed into the Pentagon by terrorists on 9/11.
Her death shocked her friends and colleagues at Amgen. The company wanted to honor her in some way and decided to commission an artist to carve a sculpture of her that would rest permanently at Amgen headquarters in Thousand Oaks, California.
That’s when Thomas Marsh, a sculptor, got a call at his home near San Francisco.
Marsh and Amgen
Marsh had crafted sculptures for Amgen before, so the call wasn’t completely unexpected.
He had done ones of previous CEOs—and several others—that ended up dotting the campus in Thousand Oaks over the course of the company’s tenure. But when he got the call in 2005 from Amgen to make a bust of Menchaca, it felt weighty. Different.
“There’s a deep recognition of this human person and individual soul,” Marsh said. “When you realize what happened to her and how it affected her family and friends and co-workers, I knew it was going to be a meaningful piece for them.”
Amgen and her family sent Marsh pictures of Menchaca, so he could begin to work on it.
Thomas Marsh was the sculptor commissed by Amgen to craft a bust that featured the image of Dora Menchaca. Photo courtesy of Thomas Marsh.
Marsh thought a lot about capturing Menchaca’s spirit. Sometimes he’d sit and stare at the pictures and touch the clay with his hands to get a feel for it. She was more than the face in the pictures and he had to try and get that into the sculpture, too.
“There is no single attribute that you ponder while you’re working,” Marsh said. “There is a sense of pathos that you hope is embodied in the work, though. As I was working on it, I asked myself about why this happened and, in the process, it does make you contemplate about the fairness and unfairness of life.”
When he received the materials, he began to create with his hands. They molded it. His tools he’s accumulated over the years chiseled the features. He could feel himself getting into the zone.
Marsh had been doing this kind of work for more than five decades going back to when he got his first commission at the age of 19. Sculpting fit his passion and stemmed from a deep need to find and express his own humanity—as well as finding the humanity of others.
He said, however, there was already a deep connection with Menchaca because 9/11 had such a seismic impact on everyone who lived through that day. Marsh wanted to make sure he got it all right, including who Menchaca was, what she meant to the people she knew and what she began to mean to him.
Slowly, her face began to take shape from the material. And that is when he really began to see her.
Dora’s Legacy
As a director of clinical research at Amgen, Menchaca had a special passion in pursuing cancer cures. Her father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and she had a relentless drive to help others battling the disease. At one point in her career at Amgen, she led a dozen simultaneous studies on prostate cancer.
She was the first in her family to graduate from college and received her PhD in epidemiology from the University of California, Los Angeles.
After her death, Amgen contributed $3 million to the funding of a cancer treatment unit in Menchaca’s honor at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Regional Medical Center. A quadrant of that unit was named for her and her name is inscribed on a plaque there and was dedicated in 2007.
“Dora was a respected and beloved member of the Amgen family,” Amgen CEO Bob Bradway said in 2023. “We remember and miss her but also take some comfort in knowing patients are being well cared for in a place that bears her name.”
Marsh learned about Menchaca’s life through the pictures and information he got from her friends and colleagues at Amgen. He knew she was a mother that loved her two children and that she was a wife who was dedicated to her husband. He thought about other memorials and sculptures that influenced him or moved him as a way to inspire him.
He took all of that and poured it into the bust so her legacy could last forever and could be reflected upon those who came across it once it was on display.
“Maybe it will make them think about the day or that this was a real person with a real life who died tragically that day,” Marsh said. “This was a human being who lived and this is part of their story.”
In the Quiet Garden
The bust was dedicated during a ceremony in the garden near the main cafeteria area at the Thousand Oaks site.
Ben Chu, executive director and Amgen Thousand Oaks site lead, recalled working with Dora in the late 1990s. He said she was a special leader and was respected for her clinical expertise and dedication to patients.
“We are honored to have a reflection area that commemorates Dora’s legacy,” he said.
The site made sense for honoring Dora because it’s in a quiet location – but also not so far out of the way that it can’t be discovered by employees who could notice it while getting their food.
It’s also cared for and maintained on a regular basis, according to Scott Sharts, senior director of Facilities at Amgen’s headquarters. Mostly cleaning, but sometimes it needs repairs from time to time, too.
“Just five years ago, for example, one side of the base came dislodged and we jumped on that quickly because we know how important this is,” he said. “And around the date of 9/11, we have folks who were here during that time who come and put flowers out and we try to make sure those are maintained for as long as possible.”
Regular care and maintenance are a part of Amgen’s commitment to honoring Dora Menchaca’s enduring legacy. Amgen file photo.
He said the landscaping is also regularly manicured and kept up so anyone who wants to take a few moments to reflect on Menchaca’s life—or anything else—can feel at peace in this one small piece of land at Amgen’s headquarters.
Marsh said he’s proud to have been able to provide Amgen with a lasting legacy for Menchaca since it was dedicated in 2005. He thinks about her and his sculpture—mostly on 9/11—but at other times as well when he considers what might’ve been, what could’ve been and what actually is.
“I hope it does what it was intended to do,” he said. “Preserve the memory and keep her alive that way, as well as to never forget what happened that day.”