My wife's grandfather ('43) passed away over spring break, and one of the things he had at his place is a 'disc' of wood that says "BONFIRE" on it. The lettering is cut out so its 'embossed' and the its 'burned' black with a torch so it shows up against the wood. Its just about 2" thick, cut so you can see the tree rings in concentric circles. We were told he donated money to a cause and this was a gift for that. Can anyone give any more information about? We are under the assumption that is it FROM the 1999 bonfire, but have no idea if its centerpole or just a log. It is nearly 12" across.

Any info is much appreciated!

Selling cuts like that is pretty standard for money raising. As far as being '99, does it have the year on it? It was my understanding that all of the logs from '99 were piled up off of 2818, and selling from that year seems too macabre and in bad taste to have happened. It's a possibility, though, that they tried to raise money by doing that.
It's a good possibility that it's from a centerpole, but it's also a good possibility it came from elsewhere, depending on how many cuts they had to make with how much wood was left.

The wood from '99 would not have been sold. Suffice it to say that practice would have been illegal because of the nature of the subject at hand.

If the slice has bark on it, or else appears to be of any type of wood other than pine, then it came off of a tree felled at Bonfire. If its yellow, perfectly circular, and pine, it's a slice of centerpole.

or from 2005

Must be 1998 centerpole. Thanks a ton this info is very helpful.

Those are generally given out to major donors to bonfire. Could be a newer centerpole, as I believe this is still done with Student Bonfire.

Also, a lot of '94 slices were given out/sold from the first centerpole. But yeah, slices are still being made now from current centerpoles.

Hi.Thanks for this information