Ramapo will host mobile 9/11 Memorial

Ramapo will host mobile 9/11 memorial
By SULAIMAN BEGsbeg@lohud.com

THE JOURNAL NEWS

If you go What: Port Authority 9/11 Traveling MemorialWhere: Ramapo Town Hall, 237 Route 59, AirmontWhen: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.Information: call 845-357-5100, Ext. 201 or visit www.wtctm.com

(Original publication: May 16, 2006)
AIRMONT — When Chester "Chet" Weekes retired as a lieutenant with the Port Authority Police Department in 2000, he planned to tour the country with his wife in a motor home the couple had recently purchased.

But a year later, the Jackson, N.J., man's priorities changed, as they did for most Americans.
The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that killed more than 3,000 people, including 37 Port Authority police officers and 38 employees, prompted Weekes and another retired Port Authority lieutenant, Gene Smith, to transform the Monaco Motorhome into a memorial on wheels.

Since March 2002, the two have hitched a 14-foot long trailer to the 38-foot motor home and traveled the country to showcase and honor the memory of those who died and display artifacts recovered from Ground Zero. The memorial will make its first stop in Rockland this weekend at Ramapo Town Hall.

"We lost 22 people in the town," said Town Supervisor Christopher St. Lawrence, whose office contacted Weekes a year ago. "As we get further away from that tragedy in September, we don't want to lose sight of the people who lost their lives and the emergency service workers who exchanged their lives so that so many people could be alive today."

Weekes, 60, said he and Smith had been volunteering at Ground Zero during the recovery effort and were given permission to use some of the collected artifacts as part of their memorial. They include crushed police car doors, airplane fragments and other debris.

Weekes said some of the most haunting pieces are the smaller ones, the ones that make a personal connection with people.

"We have things like keyboards and staple guns," he said yesterday. "Things people were using on 9/11. They really bring the picture home."

Along with an extensive pictorial display, a video documentary and a history of the Port Authority, the artifacts are placed in the trailer and set up wherever the motor home stops. The mobile home displays the names of the officers and the employees who worked for the Port Authority; Sirius, a Port Authority police dog; and the 23 New York City police officers who died that day.

"We were just in Louisiana, and it was like it just happened yesterday," Weekes said. "It brings it home a bit. I always tell people, 'Next time it could happen in L.A. This was not an attack on New York, it was an attack on America.' "