Volume 1, Issue 5 SEPTEMBER 11, 2002
Remembering September 11, 2001
Many of our Chapter Members have felt the ramifications of September 11, 2001. Many of our companies struggled with lost friends and relatives. Many more firms suffered from the downward spiral of our local economy in the aftermath. In the effort to clean up Ground Zero, numerous donations of time, labor, and financial means were donated by many of our comrades. Most donators wish to remain anonymous because it came from the heart and soul, not from an advertising budget. Here is just one published article about one of our Northeast Chapter members from Chester, New York, that might enlighten the public to what has been going on for the last year in our neck of the woods.
The following article was reformatted for this website but retyped in verbatim from the article published by the Times Herald-Record on Wednesday, August 28, 2002.
Times Herald-Record/JEFF GOULDING
Mike Wittekind of Milford, PA., moves a panel of the Ground Zero viewing wall onto a work frame. The wall, which is being manufactured at Brakewell Steel in Chester, will be 13 feet high and 1,800 feet long
Steelworkers take pride in wall for Ground Zero
By Brendan Scott
Times Herald-Record
Chester - Oil pans. Machine parts. Building supports. The 40 -odd shears, formers and welders of Brakewell Steel Fabrications Inc. build stuff like this day in and day out, and most of it ends up buried under concrete or hidden in machinery.
But this job - building the bulk of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey's "viewing wall" that will soon surround Ground Zero - is special. The wall is a sober reminder of Sept. 11. Not only does it give the workers a chance to repay some of what was lost that day, those at the Chester steel plant say, but the 13 - foot high, 1,800 - foot long wall offers a high-profile opportunity to showcase their work.
"We were going to get this job no matter what it took," said Don Hernandez of Chester, who helped put together the estimate on the steel portion of the job.
For Hernandez, 56, it was personal. His old Army buddy, Peter Ganci, Jr., the Fire Department of New York's chief of department, died in the World Trade Center attack. Hernandez said he hadn't seen Ganci's face since 1968, when they were in the 82nd Airborne Division together. That is until 2 a.m. Sept. 12, when Ganci was listed among the missing.
"We had to get this job," Hernandez said, with a hallow look in his eye.
Before this gig, Brakewell's main claim to fame was making the stairs for the Statue of Liberty. The company's crew has been scrambling double-time to get the first section of the steel framework finished by Sept. 11, in time for the day's planned memorial. Other contractors will galvanize the framework and fit it with a wire mesh, so passers-by can view the devastated 16-acre site. All told, the viewing wall is a $6 million project.
"As visitors come to the World Trade Center site and view this area where so much tragedy took place, it's important that they also see firsthand the evidence of our determination to renew and rebuild," Port Authority Vice Chairman Charles A. Gargano said at a news conference to unveil the viewing wall Aug. 21.
The first section - already in place along Church Street - will feature plaques secured to the mesh listing the names of the 2,828 dead. Subsequent sections, which will extend down Liberty Street, will describe the history of the site before, during and after Sept. 11.
Times Herald-Record/JEFF GOULDING
T. Graham of New Jersey, left, and Francis Clyne of Middletown grind down welds Monday on a panel of the viewing wall.
That hits home for Brakewell welding foreman Bill "Willie" Valentin of Scotchtown. In the early 1970's, the Brooklyn native watched the Twin Towers rise from the windows of the N Train on his daily commute to school. And he applied for his first steel-working job on the 49th floor of one tower. Now, Valentin's lending his skills to memorialize the building.
"I'm very proud of it," he said. "People I know are proud to know somebody who's working for such an event."
And although these steelworkers usually build more utilitarian items - everything from stairway supports to the traffic barriers on the Manhattan Bridge - rarely do they get to create something that draws so much attention. The viewing wall has made all the local news channels and CNN.
"This is really friggin' cool," said Tom Doyle, who runs the company with his brother, Dan. "This is what it's all about."
Doyle said the company will likely lose money on the job. But it was a job the workers at Brakewell couldn't pass up.
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