By Matt Breslow
Staff Writer
January 2, 2007
NORWALK - It's about 1 foot by 18 inches, its size belies its heft - and the weight of the events it symbolizes.
It's a piece of steel recovered from the World Trade Center site that the Norwalk Fire Department recently acquired to use in a memorial honoring firefighters killed in the New York City terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Fire Chief Denis McCarthy said everyone in the department may provide ideas for the design of a memorial using the 1-inch-thick artifact, which weighs nearly 300 pounds.
"We're in the process of developing a memorial that will be placed on fire department property in memory of the 343 firefighters that gave their lives," McCarthy said.
He said William Perkins, deputy chief for training, recently traveled to New York to pick up the piece of steel on Randall's Island, site of New York City's Fire Academy.
The department's only mandate, McCarthy said, "is that the artifact be used as a memorial to those who lost their lives in the World Trade Center collapse."
The department began trying to obtain the steel in February, he said.
Jack Orchulli, Mayor Richard Moccia's assistant for several months after the 2005 election, put McCarthy in touch with Lee Ielpi, a retired New York City firefighter who lost his son, Jonathan, also a firefighter, in the World Trade Center attacks. Ielpi, who could not be reached last week, is vice president of the September 11th Families' Association, on whose board Orchulli sits.
Orchulli said he's not sure who oversees the donation of World Trade Center artifacts, but that Ielpi arranged for a few fire departments to receive pieces of steel. Orchulli asked if Norwalk could participate, he said, and Ielpi was in favor of the idea.
Orchulli said Norwalk received a "very important relic" from the World Trade Center disaster, and more fire departments should obtain them.
"I think it's a great inspiration for them, especially a lot of the volunteer fire departments," he said.
Norwalk Assistant Chief Laurence Reilly said about 16 Norwalk firefighters were dispatched Sept. 11, 2001, to Yonkers Raceway in New York, where suburban units assembled in case they were needed in Manhattan.
The firefighters weren't called to New York City that day, Reilly said. But they later traveled on their own to ground zero as volunteers, he said.
McCarthy said the memorial is important because the Norwalk Fire Department wants people to remember the largest loss of firefighters in one incident.
"It had, and continues to have, a very profound effect on the fire service as a point in time when the rules of the game changed . . . and the threats to firefighters became very different from what they were before," he said.
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