The Memorial just has this piece of a beam from the World Trade Center with the inscription "SEPTEMBER 11, 2001"
On April 4, 2012, the Santa Cruz Sentinel (
visit link) reported the following story about this beam being brought here:
"A piece of 9/11 comes to Carmel
By JIM JOHNSON , Herald Staff Writer
POSTED: 04/02/12, 12:01 AM PDT | 0 COMMENTS
With lights flashing, a motorcade of local police and firefighters brought a steel chunk of the World Trade Center to the Peninsula Sunday afternoon, capping off a 13-day cross-country journey as part of a local woman's effort to erect a 9/11 memorial in Carmel.
Emerging from a ladder truck at Monterey Fire Station No. 1, a handful of Monterey and Carmel firefighters carried the wood-encased relic of the decade-old terrorist attacks into the station where a few dozen onlookers gathered to honor the end of a long odyssey that those who participated in said they will never forget.
Accompanied by Carmel's Carrie Ann, who is leading the "Resolve & Remembrance 9/11 Memorial" effort, the quintet of local firefighters traveled to New York to collect the artifact in mid-March, laid it into a wooden case designed by local Jim Griffith, and then spent nearly two weeks traveling across the nation. Along the way, they stopped in nine major cities and at other sites along the way, including a few 9/11 memorials, to share the keepsake with various first responders and others. At each of several selected sites, a first responder from a previous location handed the memorial off to a first responder at that site.
After a brief homecoming ceremony in Monterey, the caravan of police and fire toted the memento to the Carmel Fire Station, the official end of its trek, which organizers called the "longest hand-to-hand journey of a World Trade Center and September 11th artifact."
In Monterey, Fire Chief Andrew Miller lauded the efforts of Carrie Ann and the firefighter team he called the "fantastic five," including Jim Courtney, Bob Wilkins, Justin Cooper, Ken Hutchinson and Danny Givvin, then asked the assemblage to observe a moment of silence for the first reponders and others who lost their lives on 9/11.
After a moment, Miller told the gathering that the piece of I-beam from the downed buildings had a special power that still radiates.
"This piece of steel very definitely has energy," Miller said. "It has so much meaning for so many people. I can't tell you how much it's impacted me personally."
That power was obvious in the depth of emotion Ann and the firefighters showed as they talked about the journey.
Courtney, president of the Local 3037 firefighters union, choked up as he recounted the told about meeting New York firefighters who were involved in the response to the attacks, who he called "truly heroes who deal with (the aftermath) every day," and the man who has cut every piece of memorial steel from the wreckage of the World Trade Centers, who urged the locals, "please don't let anyone forget what happened."
"This steel really does have power," Courtney said. "You'll feel it when you touch it."
Courtney's fellow firefighters regaled the gathering with tales of visits to New York fire stations, some with more than a dozen names who fell on 9/11, marching in the St. Patrick's Day parade in New York (where Givvin asked his girlfriend to marry him), a stop-over at the Flight 93 memorial in Pennsylvania, a 9/11 memorial in Indianapolis, the Yuma air force base where Givvin's brother is stationed, and the Oklahoma City memorial for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building, as well as several sites in California from San Diego, Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, Paso Robles and Fort Hunter Liggett.
Everywhere they went, the local firefighters said they were greeted warmly by crowds of people, but one particular visit stood out for Ken Hutchinson.
In Columbus, Ohio, Hutchinson said the group spent a little more time than usual and toward the end of their visit a woman showed up and told them she'd heard they were in town and she wanted to touch the 9/11 artifact because her son was leaving for a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
"If we'd spent the same amount of time there as everywhere else, we would have been gone by the time she got there," Wilkins said. "I'm glad we were still there."
Ann, who lived 40 minutes from the World Trade Center in Connecticut on Sept. 11, 2001, said the concept of a 9/11 memorial occurred to her just before the 10-year anniversary of the attacks, when she and local firefighters were wondering what the city of Carmel had planned to mark the occasion. When local firefighters said they needed citizen leadership, the Carmel native who returned to the area several years ago, stepped up.
She said the plan now is to work with Carmel city leaders to identify a site for the memorial, and to issue a call for sculptors interested in helping design it. Essay contests for local students, with the winning work to be read at the dedication, and a landscaping contest to design the memorial grounds will follow, she said.
The goal, she said, is to have the local 9/11 memorial finsihed in time for the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
Meanwhile, the firefighters said they plan to develop a presentation based on their cross-country voyage for local schoolchildren to help them learn about 9/11.
Ann and the firefighters are engaging in fundraising efforts to help defray the cost of the all-volunteer trip back east and the expense of memorial.
For more information, visit www.carmel911memorial.us.
Jim Johnson can be reached at 753-6753 or jjohnson@montereyherald.com."