When Charlottesville's newest fire station opens on Fontaine Avenue, it will contain more than just equipment. It will be home to a relic from one of the most tragic events in recent memory, a sobering and inspiring reminder of the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.
The Charlottesville Fire Department has been given a piece of steel recovered from Ground Zero in the days after the terrorist attacks. This steel beam is a tangible reminder of those events, of the tragedy of lives lost, the shock of the nation and the surge of grief, resilience and patriotism in the days that followed.
Charlottesville Fire Department Chief Charles Werner described the beam as about 17 feet long and weighing 4,000 pounds. One end of the beam is badly torn, a mark of the trauma the steel piece sustained during the attacks. The most sobering reminder is not in the torn or damaged steel, but what is painted on the sides of the beam. The letters FDNY are marked at three different locations on the beam, and each inscription indicates that a firefighter's body was found nearby, Werner said.
Representatives from the department went to New York Jan. 25 to receive the beam and bring it back to Charlottesville. A short ceremony was held upon the beam's arrival in the city.
Werner said the station plans to use the beam as part of a memorial to "remember all of those in New York City that made the ultimate sacrifice." The beam will find its permanent home in the Fontaine Avenue fire station, which is currently under construction. The atrium of the new fire station will house a memorial to the events of Sept. 11 and to the firefighters who lost their lives that day. The beam will be the centerpiece of this memorial, but the fire station also will display a poster with the photographs of the 343 firefighters who lost their lives, Werner said. Additionally, the station has a core sample from Ground Zero that will be part of the exhibit.
Werner said the memorial will be about "honoring those that died on 9/11 and also moving forward with community resilience, bringing the community together for preparation for all sorts of hazards."
The department received the beam from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the organization building the permanent memorial at Ground Zero under directions from the 9/11 Memorial Foundation. Port Authority spokesperson Steve Coleman explained in the weeks after the terrorist attacks, the Port Authority hired an architectural consultant to go through the rubble and tag items for use in the permanent memorial. These tagged items were taken out to an abandoned hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport and have been kept there for the past nine years. Late last year, Coleman said, the 9/11 Memorial Foundation selected items for the permanent memorial and began the process of finding homes for the other items, particularly the steel.
Coleman said his office has received more than 1,500 proposals requesting a piece of steel, coming from all 50 states and eight foreign countries. So far, the organization has approved 1,040 proposals, and has given out several hundred pieces of steel. Organizations receiving a steel piece must use it for some type of public display or memorial, Coleman said. Steel artifacts will not be given out to private individuals or as private property. Coleman said the amount of interest in the memorial steel is "indicative of the fact that people want to still have a piece of 9/11 to remember what happened that day."
Richard Jones, battalion chief at the Charlottesville Fire Department, explained the significance of the beam for him.
"To me personally it is a tribute to those men and women who lost their lives on 9/11," he said. Jones recently had returned from a trip to New York and he said he was touched by the memorials he saw there. The firefighters who died Sept. 11 "lost their lives doing what they love to do," he said. "I will never forget the ultimate sacrifice that those folks made."
Werner described an "overwhelmingly positive response" from the local community, pointing out that transportation costs for the trip to New York were funded by donations from the Charlottesville community and other donations from retired New York City firefighters. The memorial will hold particular significance for members of the Charlottesville community who lost loved ones in the terrorist attacks, some of whom attended the short ceremony held Jan. 27. Jones described it as "a very emotional day for a lot of folks," saying that many "were very moved, and all had personal stories or some type of connection to the twin towers".
Werner said he hopes the beam and the memorial surrounding it "[bring] the spirit you saw the day after 9/11." He said his department is developing the idea of a "Tunnel to the Tower" run to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the attacks this coming September. Though plans are tentative, Werner said the run would begin at a University location, and participants would run the same distance as Sept. 11 responders, who ran through a tunnel to get to the World Trade Center. The run would conclude at the Pavilion on the Downtown Mall, where the steel beam would be on display. The run would support the national Wounded Warrior Project and a Virginia veteran's organization called ParadeRest.
Werner said it is particularly important to him that University students be included in such a memorial.
"What I would like to do is create a community that brings all of us together in one place to unite, get to know each other, and share memories and thoughts of that day." Receiving the beam, he said, is "a real honor for our community, and we want to make sure that we are inclusive of the University community."raising a beam to remember the fallen
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