Fort Lee’s 9/11 Memorial Taking Shape

For the past few weeks, visitors entering Fort Lee’s from the Fletcher Ave. side have been greeted by unsightly construction in the otherwise pristine and tranquil environment. That’s because the Department of Public Works has been erecting what will become Fort Lee’s own 9/11 memorial honoring the borough’s emergency services agencies and commemorating the 10th anniversary of the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001. The monument is being built from a girder and other pieces of the World Trade Center donated to the borough by the Port Authority for that specific purpose.

Judging from an informal survey Thursday morning of the site—located along the northwestern edge of the park—DPW crews are making pretty good progress on the monument, which will be unveiled and dedicated by the Fort Lee Mayor and Council in a ceremony on Sept. 11.

The girder, which arrived in Fort Lee in early March and will be the centerpiece of the monument, comes from the 79th floor of Tower 1 of the former World Trade Center, just above where the airliner hit the tower. Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich said in March borough officials know this because they’ve done extensive research, visited the hangar at JFK Airport where the steel from the World Trade Center is stored and have artists’ renderings, drawings and diagrams provided by the Port Authority to show which specific girder they have in their possession.

(See pictures of the girder in DPW storage before construction began)

The monument itself will feature the roughly 12-foot steel girder, which weighs several tons, standing straight up with a thick steel plate—one of hundreds that lined the perimeter of the base of the WTC—tilted in front of the girder featuring a placard identifying what the various pieces represent. There will also be four plaques placed around the monument—each devoted to Fort Lee’s own first responders: Police, Fire, Ambulance and Emergency Services. A wrought iron gate, a paved path and a planting area will surround the entire monument, Sokolich said.

It will also feature what Sokolich called “Fort Lee’s first eternal light.”

“There will be a piece of conduit on the bottom with a high-powered, outdoor halogen light, so it will be lit inside the girder,” Sokolich explained. “So you’ll see it at various holes in the girder and then at the end it’ll just spew into the night sky.”

A special committee formed by the mayor had previously considered several alternative locations for the memorial, including the Fort Lee Community Center and Borough Hall, but in the end settled on Constitution Park.

“This signifies sadness; you don’t want to use the word macabre,” Sokolich said in March. “We wanted to make sure it was in a place that could be recognized and respected but also not bring down the environment that it’s in. We don’t really want to compete with what the community center represents. So we found a great place that was public enough and could be viewed by a lot a people yet it wasn’t imposing on the area.”

The Borough of Fort Lee’s 9/11 Memorial dedication ceremony is Sept. 11 at 10 a.m. in Constitution Park. Sokolich said previously that government officials and curators from the Port Authority would be invited to attend the “rain or shine event.”

Fort Lee Patch will keep an eye on the construction process as the memorial continues to take shape.