Across America and overseas, some 1,200 chunks of twisted steel pulled from the ruins of Ground Zero are being used to commemorate the heroism and horrors of the 9/11 attack. Hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
@WiL
These jagged pieces of New York City’s broken heart are assuming new roles in Sept. 11 memorials taking shape in every corner of the globe.
The I-beams, girders and concrete blocks have journeyed to all 50 states and four continents to find new homes by the salmon streams of Alaska, the cotton fields of Alabama and the battlefields of Afghanistan.
“These are the artifacts of mass destruction,” said Chris Ward, head of the Port Authority, which is shipping the relics from Kennedy Airport’s cavernous Hangar 17, its base since 9/11.
When the PA decided last year to give away the debris to groups for public display, officials had no idea how many takers would surface. They were swamped with some 2,000 requests for 1,183 fragments.
“It quickly became our sacred mission to send pieces of steel out into the world to tell the story of 9/11,” Ward said.
By September, the PA hopes to turn over most of its steel to firehouses, police stations, museums, town squares and churches.
New York State sites are getting 171 pieces, including a 22-foot bent column and a 9-foot slab with an airplane part embedded inside at Albany’s New York State Museum.
“These are the touchstones of history, and to be in their presence is pretty powerful,” said Mark Schaming, the museum’s director of exhibitions.
On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, all eyes will turn toward Ground Zero and the opening of the National Sept. 11 Memorial.
That same day, at least 225 small-scale memorials featuring the rubble of the twin towers will debut across the nation.
One such place is the farming town of Brown City, Mich., (population, 1,000), which received a 19-foot, 15,000-pound icon to display at the local firehouse.
“We’re nobody from nowhere, but every year on 9/11, we put 343 flags in front of our fire station to remember New York’s lost firefighters,” said Fire Chief Jim Groat Jr., 51.
The PA charges nothing, but requires groups to pick up the steel, so Groat, his 77-year-old father and five farmers, who had to wait until they could plant corn and sugar beets, spent months planning a trip to Queens.
None of the Brown City volunteers had seen New York, but they fell in love with the big city. “Our world is smaller than your world – our fires are smaller than your fires – but our heart is in the same place as your heart,” he said.
The anguish of 9/11 still haunts Hopatcong, N.J., which mourns three lost residents. It plans to put a 9-foot, 2,500-pound column in its memorial gardens.
“There are 3,000 lives embedded in that piece of steel, and we want to remember, we have to remember, every single one of them,” said mayor Sylvia Petillo.
The head of the Atomic Testing Museum in Las Vegas, which houses a 2,000-pound support column, sees it in mystical terms.
“It’s magical and spiritual to touch the I-beam,” museum CEO Allan Palmer said.
Guardians of America’s security are drawing lessons from relics like the rusted 3-foot shard sent to the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Command at Pearl Harbor, site of the first sneak attack on U.S. soil.
“The USS Arizona Memorial is across the street, and the WTC steel will be one more reminder of our duty to the nation,” said Michael Hutchison, a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst.
The Lukens Ironworks in Coatesville, Pa., which forged the original steel for the trade center in the late 1960s, got the largest shipment – 28 truckloads, including a 58-foot trident.
The 500-ton cargo, including columns that once supported America’s tallest buildings, will become the centerpiece of the town’s new National Iron & Steel Heritage Museum.
A 6-inch scrap, the smallest piece in Hangar 17, went to the Maple Grove Fire Rescue Department in Minnesota. “It’s a great honor,” Fire Chief Scott Anderson said.
