World Trade Center Steel Inspires 9/11 Memorials Across America

To the son who followed a family legacy into firefighting, it evokes the father and former Long Island fire chief who fell that day.
 
To the director of a Georgia park, it explains why he’s been called to war three times in the past decade.

To the residents of Gig Harbor, WA, it required no less than an escort of firefighters, paramedics and as many as 100 motorcycles during its nine-day, cross-country passage from New York City to the crash site of United Flight 93 in rural Pennsylvania to Mount Rushmore in South Dakota to its new home in the Pacific Northwest.

Shards of a symbol, hunks of steel. Bolt-studded, fire-scarred beams that until 9/11 supported the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York now lie scattered across American towns—reminders of the morning over which there remains mourning. In hundreds of American communities, each piece recalls a day to remember, a hope for the future, a prayer for peace.

From Lemon Grove, CA, where a alongside a turnout coat and Old Glory at Station 10, to Merrick, Long Island, NY, where a high-school valedictorian wrote a letter to launch a memorial. From historic Savannah, GA, to glitzy Beverly Hills, CA, Sept. 11 isn’t one moment or a decade’s acknowledgement but a constant commemoration.

Remnants of the World Trade Center are honored in various ways in scores of cities and towns throughout a nation that, 10 years ago Sunday, came under terrorist attack for the first time in its history.

During the past three years, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which owns the World Trade Center, has released more than 1,200 steel artifacts from the collapsed towers for use in public memorials. World Trade Center steel lies at the heart of monuments in 50 states, several other countries and the USS New York.

Patch has reported on the acquisition of those artifacts and construction of associated memorials in Lemon Grove and at least 70 U.S. communities, many of which plan to unveil or dedicate their local 9/11 tributes on Sunday.

No ordinary monuments, these near-sacred relics have been sought and claimed by firefighters and Legionnaires, town folk and clergy, teenage Scouts with no kin among 9/11’s victims and school children too young to have formed their own memories of its images.

In 2008, the Port Authority began releasing remnants of World Trade Center steel debris from Hanger 17 at John F. Kennedy International Airport, where it had been hauled and stored during the site clean-up. Again, Americans stood shoulder to shoulder over 9/11, gathering for the passage of beams and debris. They lined streets, highways and bridges. Bagpipe bands played “Amazing Grace.”

UPS shipped smaller chunks in plain packages. Larger, heavier beams left the hangar, one by one, draped in flags, covered in roses and strapped to the back of fire engines, pickups or flatbed trucks for solemn processions to new resting places.

Most arrived amid escorts of firefighters and paramedics who traded battered turnout coats for formal dress blues, spurred by spiritual kinship with the 343 New York firefighters and medics who died after responding to the attacks.

Some pieces resembled rustic crosses or oversize anvils, while others were more akin to shimmering pieces of abstract art even before their incorporation into thoughtfully conceived monuments or lush gardens.

On the way, many of the World Trade Center relics passed by columns of elementary schoolchildren, their hands on hearts or clutching flags.

“There is an entire generation that did not see the images from that day,” Barnegat Township, NJ, School Superintendent Karen Wood told the crowd that in August welcomed her community’s 500-pound piece of rusting steel for a planned memorial at the high school.

“We have a responsibility to educate the generations to come so they never forget everything that occurred on Sept. 11, 2001.”

Cindi Lash is a Patch Regional Editor in Western Pennsylvania.