A Malvernite who became a 9/11 heroine

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Before the last beam of the South Tower of the World Trade Center was removed from ground zero in 2002, a construction worker a taped a small card to it — a card from the memorial service for Diane Damato Urban, a Malvernite who had died while trying to save someone else during the Sept. 11 attacks.

The beam was transported to a hangar at John F. Kennedy International Airport, and nothing further was heard about it until the National September 11 Memorial Museum opened earlier this year.

For 12 years, Urban’s family had wondered what would become of the beam and, more important, Urban’s memorial card. Would they remove it from this important piece of 9/11 history?

Not long after learning that the beam would be installed in the museum, Urban’s family attended the museum’s opening, hoping the memorial card would still be there. They were not disappointed.

“Firemen, police and construction workers — all of them placed their marks on that beam to remember their friends,” said Urban’s sister, Theresa Corio. “She was a first responder, just like all the other people memorialized on that beam. It’s quite an honor for her to be there.”

Urban was a supervisor at New York State’s Department of Tax and Finance, and was working on the 86th floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower on Sept. 11, 2001. According to information gathered by Corio, her sister was in the 78th-floor sky lobby when the second plane hit. According to Corio, two of Urban’s coworkers survived, and were among the last to see Urban before she perished.

Her co-workers had reported in various accounts, as well as in the book “102 Minutes,” by New York Times reporters Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn, that Urban was last seen trying to help a woman whose legs had been sliced off by debris during the attack. Urban, her coworkers said, had yelled to them to save themselves as the situation rapidly worsened, and they had made it down the stairs safely to a waiting ambulance.

Just as the ambulance drove away, the south tower collapsed.

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