Ten years from now there will be an entire generation that will never know the feeling of looking at the New York skyline with the Twin Towers standing proud and tall over lower Manhattan.
Residents will have their own chance to see the memorial plans and ask questions at an open house at Weehawken Town Hall to be held on April 27 from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
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In memory of victims and victors
On Wednesday, Mayor Richard Turner was joined by town, county, and state officials along with members of North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, the Port Authority, Weehawken Police Department, and many others to break ground on the site of a 9/11 memorial on the waterfront.
Located behind the Rivers Edge building in the Port Imperial Community, the memorial is being constructed near the site of the old Jamestown Ferry Terminal where approximately 60,000 evacuees from New York City passed through on their journey home that dreadful day.
Thousands of emergency management personnel and hundreds of volunteers worked for hours on end as all types of boats, from private yachts to NY Waterway ferries, transported people from Ground Zero across the river to safety and solace.
Eerily quiet and orderly, it was quite possibly the largest rescue effort in the history of the State of New Jersey, said Turner.
“It shows what a community, region, and state can do when put to the test,” he said.
Support in steel
Carl Goldberg of Roseland Properties, which is footing the bill for the memorial and is part of the public/private partnership that has paid for most of the waterfront development in the township, introduced the design of the memorial.
There will be a lawn area with seating, a grove of trees with plaques recognizing the five victims from Weehawken as well as the efforts of all the first responders and the central role that NY Waterway played that day.
The heart of the memorial will be actual pieces from the World Trade Center, embedded in an infinity pool with a fountain.
The steel girders, measuring 30 feet tall by 16 feet wide, were recovered by the Port Authority and donated to the memorial.
The placement of the steel in accordance with the seating area will provide an exact view from the memorial to where the towers once stood.
Goldberg said that the memorial will provide a place to privately contemplate a moment in time that none who were there will ever forget.
“It’s a great addition to the waterfront,” said Mayor Turner. “People who come down here in the future will know this is a site where hundreds of people helped their fellow citizens.”
Residents will have their own chance to see the memorial plans and ask questions at an open house at Weehawken Town Hall on April 27 from 4 to 8 p.m.
Witnesses to history
Hudson County Executive Tom DeGise said there was no better witness to the devastation of 9/11 than Hudson County, which now has a shoreline that has been dedicated to that day from the teardrop memorial in Bayonne to this new memorial planned in Weehawken.
The county is home to so many residents who participated in the history of the event, he said. North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue firefighter and Weehawken resident Steve Irving was one of those people – he was on the pier for 10 hours during the rescue mission.
“It was an incredible sight,” said Irving. “Everyone had that dead stare in their eyes.”
Irving said that the groundbreaking ceremony on Wednesday brought back a rush of emotions for him as he remembered watching the scene across the river and feeling helpless but at the same time helping others on this side.
James Halpin, also of North Hudson Regional Fire and Rescue, agreed and said it was a sort of silent mayhem, especially the eerie sight of seeing the Lincoln Tunnel shut down.
Weehawken Police Officers Henry Zeeb and Pat Connor both worked several days of overtime after the event while their wives were pregnant.
Connor said he looks forward to using the memorial park one day as a way to explain to his kids, who were not even born at the time, what happened on that day.
The completed memorial will be dedicated on Sept. 11, 2001 – the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy.
Lana Rose Diaz can be reached at ldiaz@hudsonreporter.com.