Cranberry memorial honors, educates
CRANBERRY TWP — Eleven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Bruce Hezlep realized a memorial in front of the Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company's station on Route 19 could serve two important roles.
“It initially was, hey, this will be a great reminder of what happened and honor those who were killed,” Hezlep said. “Secondarily, it was like, wait a minute. This could be an educational tool for people that don't remember the events on Sept. 11.”
The monument — which contains granite slabs, a timeline of the 9/11 attacks, pictures of first responders who died, and a piece of steel from the World Trade Center — was erected in 2012, and serves both goals Hezlep described.
“We know there's many families across the country and beyond that may never, ever get to go to Ground Zero,” said Jeff Berneburg, who served as assistant chief in 2012. “I was able to bring a piece of that to Cranberry and have it constructed in front of the fire station. Anyone has the ability, if they want to, to come visit the site, look at what we brought back, and it's accessible 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“Anyone can come look at the memorial, look at the timeline, look at the photographs from each crash site and touch a piece of steel from Ground Zero.”
And Hezlep, who served as fire company president in 2012, said, it's a well-visited and hallowed site.
“I've seen people leave flowers there,” Hezlep said. “I've seen them leave American flags. I've seen various trinkets that run the gamut. People are looking for some healing and maybe they're saying, 'Hey, you know what, I know this person is gone, and this is the only tangible piece that I have that's connected to that person.'”
'Enormity' hits home
For Hezlep, who was fire company president in 2012 when it acquired the steel beam from the World Trade Center that is used in the memorial, it was the drive to New York City when he realized the importance of an educational tool.
He said his then 9-year-old son — who now is also a volunteer firefighter with Cranberry — was reading the timeline of events when they picked up the beam.
“He would come back and every so often he would say, 'Dad, this is the last picture of this firefighter. Why is it the last picture of him?'” Hezlep recalled. “I said, 'He was killed and they never found his body.' It was a really somber trip. He was very quiet, and all of a sudden I think the enormity of what had happened (on 9/11) really hit home.”
It was his son's questions and realization that drove the multifaceted goals of the memorial. Hezlep said he and Berneburg realized then that the monument should have a timeline of events.But, as Hezlep said, the monument brings home the enormity of the events to everyone, not just those who were too young to remember the Sept. 11 attacks.“I think when you watch it on TV and when you read about it, it's some type of abstract event. You know it happened,” Hezlep said. “If it's tangible, where people can come up and touch it and you can see the incredible force that must have been impacted upon that piece of steel because it's kind of ripped and torn and gnarled. … That's when it's real.”Educative designBerneburg agreed with Hezlep that the artifact itself brings about a learning experience. Although they weren't able to see the beam until picking it up in New York, the fire company couldn't have been more pleased.“What we received, I couldn't have asked for anything better,” Berneburg said. “It told a story of its own just by looking at it.”While compelling, the beam's story didn't tell enough of the attacks on its own, Berneburg said. When the company arrived home with the artifact, it got to work planning the rest of the design.“I got on Google Earth and pulled up the World Trade Center as it was before 9/11, and I was like, 'Let's lay out a footprint of the entire site,'” Berneburg said.When Berneburg laid out the site to scale, he was able to fit the beam between two granite pillars that represented the Twin Towers. That, he said, represents “the steel still being held strong between the two buildings.”The fire company added another slab to the design, this one not symbolizing a tower, but rather serving as a tool for education.“We had another piece of granite put together that we had put the entire timeline of the day's events from start to finish: Where the planes loaded, when people boarded them, when they took off, when they crashed,” Berneburg said.It also recognizes the public servants who perished in the attacks, with the police, firefighters' and ambulance services' patches embossed on the front of the stone. At the top, the stone depicts an American flag with the words, “We will never forget.”On the back, the slab depicts a “snapshot of each of the areas that were involved in the crashes,” Berneburg said.TodayTwenty years after the attacks, the monument remains a solemn, dignified site at the fire station.Each Sept. 11, the fire company memorializes the losses, hanging a flag from the platform of a ladder truck. Assistant chief John Pristas in recent years plays taps from behind the monument.“We always seem to have people who stop by and pay their respects (each Sept. 11), either at the memorial or people who stop by at the fire station,” Berneburg said.But as a public monument, it's visited more frequently than on each anniversary of the attacks.“It's become a place where people who know or have lost people on 9/11 will leave things and remember and talk about it,” Hezlep said.It's important the monument is both there and available at all times, according to Berneburg.As he said, not everyone can see the Ground Zero memorials in New York, and even for those who can there's something powerful about seeing, touching and connecting with the artifact.“Myself and the fire company are very proud to be able to provide the memorial to those who wish to visit,” he said.But it's also a key tool of remembrance for the fire company too, Hezlep said.“We have a lot of pride in it. When it snows, guys are always out there removing the snow from it,” Hezlep said. “It's almost like hallowed ground for our guys and ladies in the fire department, and I think it's just some way that we can say thanks to those who did lose their lives.”
