First Responder at Ground Zero to Speak at Steel Museum in Coatesville on Sunday

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The National Iron & Steel Heritage Museum will host “Coatesville Remembers September 11” on Sunday, the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. Above, one of the WTC's iron tridents that was returned to Coatesville after the attacks.

The horror of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 is not what resonates today with first responder Dan O’Deens.

“What I remember most was the rebuilding of hope in the individual lives of people who I had the privilege of helping,” he said.

O’Deens labored through 20-hour days in New York City, where he worked with the Salvation Army, assisting lines of people a half-mile long to obtain necessities. While at Ground Zero, he said, “When a body part was found it was treated with total dignity. It was treated as a person.”

On Sunday at “Coatesville Remembers September 11” at the National Iron & Steel Heritage Museum, O’Deens will share some of his stories of what it was like during those first pivotal weeks after the tragedy.

For many Chester County residents the annual "Coatesville Remembers 9/11" memorial is an opportunity to reflect and heal.--photo via Daily Local News.
For many Chester County residents the annual “Coatesville Remembers 9/11” memorial is an opportunity to reflect and heal.–photo via Daily Local News.

The event, held on the 15th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, honors those who lost their lives that and the steelworkers involved with the building of the World Trade Center.

The museum is the trustee of the largest collection of World Trade Center steel artifacts from 9/11 outside of New York City. The official program will be held on the grounds of the NISHM, in The Lukens National Historic District, on South 1st Avenue and Lincoln Highway, beginning at 1:00 PM.

Law enforcement officials, firefighters, school children, senior groups, civic groups, and civilians are invited to join the event. Refreshments will be served courtesy of Wegmans.

The Steelworkers’ Memorial, dedicated to the steelworkers who lost their lives in Coatesville, will serve as the backdrop to the ceremony. The centerpiece of the memorial is a steel “tree” or trident. This steel tree is a 35-ton section of the North Tower façade. Steel trees – structural trident shapes that were fabricated at Lukens Steel in Coatesville in the late 1960s – framed the first nine floors and soaring lobbies of the North and South Towers of the World Trade Center.

The images of those trees, which remained standing, jutting out of the ground like fingers reaching toward the heavens, are indelible in the minds of those who viewed them. The trees became icons of the tragedy.

Through negotiations with the Port Authority of New York/New Jersey, the Graystone Society was able to secure 10 steel trees for use as the centerpiece of the NISHM. The trees were returned to their birthplace in Coatesville on April 14, 2010 in a solemn procession.

After a 13-hour journey from Manhattan, 28 tractor-trailers brought 500 tons of World Trade Center steel home, where they remain as silent sentinels of a day in American history that will never be forgotten.

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