Community Corner

VIDEO: Mass Task Force 9/11 Memorial

The 9/11 steel awaits placement in a memorial at the Mass Task Force's campus at the Beverly Airport.

It was early morning May 2010 when the 12 members returned to New York City to pick up the World Trade Center steel they had been awarded for their memorial site.

It was two large steel window posts that were struck by a 757 wing on the second tower.

All but one of the Massachusetts rescue team were part of the crew that had responded on Sept. 11, 2001, the first FEMA task force to Ground Zero.

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Ed Seligman, now a , was the force’s logistics person, and Bobby Better, a Swampscott resident and deputy chief for the Chelsea Fire Department, was head of rescue operations.

The May 2010 return was moving, they said. It remains emotional.

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They were met by New York City Fire Department officials and toured the hangar of artifacts stored at John F. Kennedy International Airport.

The warehouses include fire engines, police cruisers, personal vehicles and an array of items culled from the rubble.

“There was this smell that just brought ... back ...,” Better said, gathering himself. “I wasn’t the only one it affected that way.”

At one point in the tour they came upon an object they learned was a  subway turn-style.

Better told the tour leader that one of the Mass Task Force’s first rescue assignments was going down to a subway car.

The hangar tour then moved to another part of the warehouse and right there was a subway car.

Better looked at it, surprised to see it appear just after he had mentioned a subway car.

On it was a Mass Task Force marking.

“I just lost my breath,” said Better, 38 years a firefighter.

By day’s end the crew had loaded the steel on a flatbed trailer and tied it down with great care. 

“We lashed it down like it was something very fragile,” Better said.

They draped it in an American flag and people on the streets of New York knew what the Mass Task Force truck and trailer were carrying.

The people waved, lifted thumbs, honked horns — a solemn and respectful recognition.

The bent steel posts now rest on the Mass Task Force campus in Beverly.

The force hopes to make them the centerpiece in a memorial site with a fountain just inside the campus gate.

 


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