9-11 Memorial Groundbreaking Ceremony Fulfills Dream

9-11 memorial groundbreaking ceremony fulfills dream

The Green Bay Fire Department color guard parades past a row of shovels prior to the 9-11 groundbreaking on Friday (photo by Tina M. Gohr).
By Adam HardyNews-ChronicleWhat began as one woman's dream took its first steps toward becoming a reality on Friday as representatives from the city and state gathered along with police, firefighters and Green Bay residents at the Neville Public Museum to break ground for the WTC 9-11 Memorial.
Heralded by a full-color guard procession and the national anthem sung by Jill Cocian, family members of victims who were lost in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, turned the first shovels full of dirt at the site where the 34-foot monument will stand.
The memorial began as an idea shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when Barb Jack, president of the three-member 9-11 memorial committee, said she thought of the monument when she saw the amount of wreckage at Ground Zero in New York City.
"I just didn't like seeing all that debris being thrown onto a heap pile," Jack said. "I thought I could do something else with it. I wanted to take some of that debris and put it in every state, for the families that couldn't get out to New York."
Six months after writing to New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in December 2001, Jack said she received a call from Ground Zero representatives.
"They called and asked me, 'What do you want to do with it?'" Jack said.
But according to George Ecker, vice president and secretary-treasurer for the memorial committee, things didn't work out quite so easily as Jack had expected.
"She (Jack) was promised hundreds of tons of debris for the project," Ecker said. "But she wasn't getting it. Suddenly, they couldn't find anything for her."
Ecker, a communications professor and longtime friend of Jack, decided to come on board in May 2002 to help negotiate with Ground Zero representatives for the necessary materials.
"For six months, all I did was contact every junkyard and place that I thought there could be some source," Ecker said. "But they were selling (the salvage) overseas and barges of it left the country."
After speaking with the former and current mayors of New York, along with representatives of the White House and "almost every single member of Congress in the United States," Ecker said he arranged for a spot on "The Late Show" with David Letterman. Shortly thereafter, Ecker found success.
"Finally on October 6, I received an e-mail that said, 'How much do you need,'" Ecker said. "I still have that, and I'm planning on framing it."
In January 2003, the salvage was brought to Wisconsin, where it was stored until a site could be found to erect the proposed memorial.
Again, the process was not an easy one.
According to Paul Vander Heyden, memorial committee member and project construction manager, the materials sat in storage for more than two years while the committee searched for a location for the memorial.
"It was a real battle getting a site," Vander Heyden said.
Jack's original vision was to have a memorial located in every state capital in the United States, which meant building the first site in Madison. But that was not to be.
"Madison, being such a radical town, after much litigation decided that they didn't want any part of it," said Vander Heyden.
The council contacted Appleton and Menasha, to no avail, before reaching Green Bay Mayor Jim Schmitt and Ald. Guy Zima.
"Zima jumped on the idea with two feet and Mayor Schmitt wanted the memorial really bad, and they worked with the City Council to help us get it there," Vander Heyden said. "So that is how it wound up in Green Bay."
The memorial, the first of its kind to be built in the United States, will be placed on the site that was recently occupied by The Receiver statue, which for years was located outside the Green Bay Packer Hall of Fame.
"Politically it is not easy to move a Packers statue, let me tell you," Schmitt said at the groundbreaking. "But it was the right thing to do. É It is going to show the country what kind of city we are."
Other speakers at the groundbreaking included U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Green Bay, and Chris Lyons, a search and rescue volunteer worker at Ground Zero from the morning of Sept. 11 until cleanup of the site concluded May 30, 2002.
"I, as a representative of New York, am proud to stand with all of you as we take another opportunity to remember, honor, and preserve the memory of those who lost their lives and to mourn with their loved ones," Lyons said.
The groundbreaking concluded with a moment of silence and the exit procession of the color guard. The memorial, which will feature two 30-foot illuminated stainless steel towers and a 15-foot-wide, pentagonal granite base with the 3,030 Sept. 11 victims engraved on it, is scheduled for completion in late May.