AUBURN — The Auburn Police Department on Wednesday will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of a fellow officer in the line of duty.

Officers will place flowers and ribbons on the stone memorial to Bonney that sits outside the department’s building on Minot Avenue. The department will lower its flag to half-staff for the day. Each officer will wear a black band of mourning on his or her badge in remembrance of the officer who risked, and lost, his life trying to save a teenager.

Officer Rodney “Rocky” Bonney died on April 6, 1981, while attempting to save a boy who had fallen into the Androscoggin River from the railroad trestle that connects Lewiston and Auburn. The call came at about 9:30 p.m. Bonney and partner John Perrino, now a sergeant with the Freeport Police Department, rushed to the river to help. Both officers entered the frigid river and swam to the 15-year-old boy, John Thibodeau, of Lewiston.

The officers reached the boy, but were unable to pull him to shore in the strong current. Bonney and Thibodeau slipped beneath the waters and disappeared. Their bodies were not found until the next afternoon, despite police search efforts that went late into the night.

“It doesn’t seem possible” that it happened 30 years ago, said Cherrie Bonney, officer Bonney’s widow. “It’s still very vivid.”

Bonney was a caring, fun-loving husband who loved to be outdoors and loved being a police officer, Cherrie said. In line for a detective’s position after only two years on the Auburn force, Bonney was reluctant to make the move to a desk job, Cherrie said, because his favorite part of the job was “walking the beat” and talking with people in the community.

Bonney also loved children, Cherrie said, and frequently stopped by the Franklin School to mentor students. After Bonney’s death, Cherrie worked with the Franklin School to establish a scholarship, still offered today to one student each year. “He loved children so much, and tried to help them, and that’s how he died: helping a child,” Cherrie said.

Three decades later, hints of the officer’s service remain around the city. Bonney Park, on the Auburn side of the trestle, was named in the officer’s honor, and a newer stone monument sits outside the police station.

“I love the park. It is so incredible,” Cherrie said, but she is happy that the police station has its own monument, “because it’s what he loved to do.”

None of the current Auburn officers were working for the department in 1981, but they still take time each year to reflect on his death, and that of officer Norman Philbrick, the city’s only other officer who died while on duty, in 1949.

I think it’s awesome that … they still have his plaque and portrait hanging in the police station. They haven’t forgotten him,” said Bonney’s daughter, Heather, who was 11 when he died.

“With any line-of-duty death, it’s especially important to remember the sacrifice they made,” Auburn Deputy Chief Jason Moen said. Bonney “went into that river without due regard for himself. He didn’t hesitate to jump in that water,” Moen said. “It’s an important part of our history, and as officers we take pause to remember that.”

With the development of the city’s dive team and newer equipment such as a boat designed for water rescues acquired by the Auburn Fire Department, today’s officers might not have to make the kind of decision Bonney did 30 years ago. “We have a lot more tools and resources available than they did,” Moen said.