Steel resolve: W.H. community working to acquire WTC beams

All that remains of the twin towers of the World Trade Center are pieces of steel and memories. Photographs of the iconic buildings, while cherished, are not tangible in the same way as a steel beam, which is why West Hempstead residents are working to acquire one to be used as a monument at their Sept. 11 memorial.

“It’s part of our history,” said Rosalie Norton, president of the West Hempstead Community Support Association. “As a community with so many residents who perished that day, it becomes sort of a living memorial to them.”

Shortly after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, in which 12 West Hempstead residents perished, a community member approached Norton and asked why the hamlet’s memorial at Hall’s Pond Park did not include a piece of World Trade Center steel, like so many surrounding communities — including East Meadow, Franklin Square, Lynbrook and Rockville Centre. Norton started the push to acquire the steel in October, asking State Assemblyman Ed Ra (R-Franklin Square) for help in working with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which owns the remains of the twin towers and distributes them to public and municipal agencies as well as nonprofit organizations that intend to display them.

Ra coordinated a letter-writing campaign with local legislators and community leaders, including members of the West Hempstead Chamber of Commerce. He asked that they write letters to the Port Authority requesting a steel beam and mail them to his office. From there he planned to forward them to the agency.

“West Hempstead lost a pretty significant number of people … and they were involved citizens of the community,” Ra told the Herald, “and we thought that it was certainly an appropriate community to be given one of those pieces of steel that we can incorporate into some sort of monument to the people lost that day.”

Ra has the support of State Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos (R-Rockville Centre) and Hempstead Town Councilman Ed Ambrosino as well as the West Hempstead Fire Department and several local leaders, but so far his office has only received about a dozen letters. He said he hopes that with added publicity, more people will participate in the effort.

“[T]hese were very involved citizens in the community,” he said of those who died in the attacks, “and they’ve left behind friends and neighbors and family members who deserve an appropriate location where they can go and reflect, not just once a year on the anniversary.”

Some of those friends and relatives expressed delight at the prospect of being able to touch a piece of the towers where their loved ones perished a decade ago. “It would memorialize them and, besides the individuals that we once know and loved, it would be reflective that that happened to us,” said Lakeview Fire District Commissioner Fred Senti, a lifelong friend of Robert DeAngelis Jr., a volunteer firefighter who died in the south tower on Sept. 11, 2001. “Maybe [it would] give some people some solace and peace.”

It could also add significance to the events of that day, according to Derrick Dingle, whose brother, Jeffrey, died in the north tower, where he had attended a conference at Windows on the World. “If it could … bring the community together to do more public-service efforts in bringing peace and tolerance,” said Dingle, who grew up with his brother in West Hempstead, “I’m all for it.”

He went on to say that if a piece of steel were brought to the Hall’s Pond Park memorial, it should be used as more than just a monument. “It’s a nice gesture to bring a piece to remember, but there are local places … within traveling distance where one can do that,” Dingle said. “But if [there were] a bigger platform to bring some significance to the lives that were lost … then I think that would really bring meaning and justification for having a piece of the steel planted in West Hempstead.”

Norton agreed, and said that if the community is successful in acquiring the steel, it would be placed beside an engraved stone or bronze plaque that would bear the words of relatives and friends of those who perished.

Such a monument should also serve as a lesson in history, according to Senti. “I think in future generations they should identify with something horrific like this,” he said, noting that the beams’ symbolism is part of what makes them desirable.

“There’s nothing more memorable,” said Ambrosino. “When you see the tangible representation of what happened on that day, especially if the steel is tortured, bent, burned or something, it strikes you a little more, it forces us to remember what happened that day. Unfortunately, it’s an iconic moment.”

It’s still too early to know whether the Port Authority will grant the community’s request, but according to Ra’s chief of staff, Frank Intagliata, a representative of the agency’s Public Affairs Department has said she is “analyzing their inventory” and will notify him of a decision soon.

Steve Coleman, a Port Authority spokesman, told the Herald that the authority has already approved 1,300 requests for steel and is in the process of accommodating them. “Right now we’re nearing the end of the inventory of steel that we have available,” Coleman explained. “So any requests that come in now are being held until we can actually confirm what we have left.” As soon as the Port Authority determines how much steel remains, it will decide how to distribute it, Coleman said.