By Jan Sears
The Press Enterprise
NEW YORK — A 9 /11 memorial that features a six-foot-long I-beam from the twin towers in New York City will be unveiled in Loma Linda on Tuesday evening, Sept. 11.
The hour-long ceremony will begin at 5:30 p.m. and will include speeches by politicians, bagpipes and drums from the San Bernardino City Fire Department, cadets from the Crafton Hills Regional Fire Academy and the Loma Linda Academy orchestra.
An urban search and rescue team leader will talk about his experiences at Ground Zero after the 2001 attacks.
The memorial features the 600-pound beam stretched between two concrete towers that sit within a pentagon-shaped border.
The Loma Linda department received the beam last year after completing a nearly two-year application process to receive a 9/11 artifact. The Loma Linda Firefighters Association applied for the steel in the belief that the department could create both a memorial and a place to teach children about the significance of 9/11 events, said Nate Boucher, the department’s public information officer.
The department raised about $500,000 to pay for the design and creation of the memorial, Boucher said.
The monument, which sits at the southeast corner of Barton Road and Loma Linda Drive, honors the 343 New York firefighters who died in the attacks. The memorial is completed, but will remain covered by a tarp until Tuesday’s unveiling, Boucher said.
During a ceremony last year to mark the beam’s arrival, Loma Linda Fire Chief Jeff Bender said that much like the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, “Sept. 11 shaped who we are and what we believe in.” “This memorial will provide a solemn place to remember and reflect,” Bender said.
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