By Stephanie Noda Northern Valley Suburbanite
ENGLEWOOD, NJ – Residents will have a place to pay their respect to those lost on September 11, 2001 as construction work will soon begin on a 9/11 Memorial for the city’s Veteran’s [sic] Memorial Park.
Council members awarded a $47,260 contract to Tec-Con Contractors to provide site work and awarded a $42,500 contract to the American Monument Company to install granite on the memorial during the June 25 city council meeting.
The city is on a “tight” schedule to get the memorial finished by September – as the project needs a solid 60 days to complete – but is pushing to have everything ready by this year’s September 11 Commemoration Ceremony, said Assistant City Engineer Frantz Volcey. Site work is expected to begin in the next couple of weeks, said Volcey.
During the city’s September 11 Commemoration Ceremony last year at Veteran’s Memorial Park, Mayor Frank Huttle III outlined the preliminary designs for the structure, which will contain a steel beam from the World Trade Center.
The monument will consist of three different sides: one side that lists the names of Englewood residents who were lost on 9/11, one side that provides a description of the steel beam, and a third side that will contain the famous “Ground Zero Spirit” photo, which was donated to the city by the Borg Family, owners of North Jersey Media Group. The beam itself will “point towards the sky” on the top of the memorial, said Huttle at the time.
Councilwoman At-Large Lynne Algrant said it was a “terrific” opportunity for the city to receive a piece of 9/11 steel, citing Fire Chief Gerald Marion as being instrumental in facilitating the process. Algrant said that after traveling around this summer with her kids seeing memorials in Gettysburg, people shouldn’t underestimate the impact memorial can have on the younger generation.
“It’s really incredible for all of us to see how young kids process events when they have something tangible to look out,” said Algrant. “The power of the memorial really resonates very differently than the stories, the tales and the newspaper articles.”
