Have World Trade Center Beams, Will Travel

OAK LAWN, IL—Like many Americans, Bill Egan was at work at World's Finest Chocolate, where he was a production manager, the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, when two commercial airlines crashed into the World Trade Center.

"A TV was brought out at work, but I didn't really know the magnitude of it until I got home," Egan recalled. "When I heard that the towers had fallen, I thought they tipped over. I didn't know they crumbled."

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Now retired, the Oak Lawn man has been driving two pieces of World Trade Center steel recovered from the North Tower to communities around the country as part of the Children's Museum in Oak Lawn's 9/11 exhibit.

Four 22-foot steel beams recovered from the North Tower were brought to Oak Lawn from New York in 2010 for the community's First Responders Memorial at the Oak Lawn-Patriot Metra Station. Oak Lawn firefighters and police officers escorted the approximately 12.5 tons of World Trade Center steel home from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Beams leaving OL Children's Museum for Rochester, NY

During the creation of the "Heralds of 9/11" monument, named one of the seven 9/11 memorials to visit in the United States by Smithsonian Magazine, artist Erik Blome had designed two spires to be attached to the tops of two of the four beams.

"But they were so mangled you just couldn't put a spire on them," said Adam Woodworth, executive director of the children's museum. "So Erik made a straight cut across the beams to attach the spires."

Then-village manager Larry Deetjen, a member of the Oak Lawn Rotary, which took charge of the project's fundraising, approached Woodward about donating the pieces to the children's museum.

"It didn't feel right to discard the pieces as scrap," Woodward said. "He asked if we could do an exhibit with the pieces."

Woodward's next thought was how to put a day like Sept. 11, 2001, into an exhibit at a children's museum for young visitors who weren't even born yet.

"A few nights later I woke up at 3 a.m., and I thought this exhibit isn't about 9/11, it's about 9/12, 9/13 and 9/14," Woodward said. "It was about helping each other, friendship, citizenship, and what it means to be a good human. That's how we utilized it while in the museum."

Soon word got out about the children's museum's WTC artifacts, the rubble of which was held as crime scene evidence by the Port Authority until beams were made available to communities across the country for memorials. As the Oak Lawn exhibit hit the road, it soon became apparent that the people who came to view the WTC pieces were thinking about the tragic late summer Tuesday morning when planes flew into buildings and crashed into fields.

"We added some stand-ups, a timeline, and a QR code that links to President George W. Bush's speech that evening," Woodward said. "It feels more complete."

When the exhibit ventured to its first location last year, hundreds were waiting in the parking lot of the USS Silversides Submarine Museum in Muskegon, MI. The exhibit was escorted the entire way by the Illinois, Indiana and Michigan Patriot Guards, who handed off escort duties at each state line.

"Those guys rode from Oak Lawn to Muskegon in a storm," Egan said. "I didn't know what to expect from the public when we pulled onto the museum property. It was quite emotional."

The children's museum WTC exhibit has traveled to Wichita, KS, Elkhart, IN, and throughout Illinois. The exhibit has lately been making the rounds of stair climbs, where firefighters climb the equivalent of the 110 floors of the World Trade Center in honor of the 343 FDNY firefighters who died on 9/11 and to raise money for charity.

Egan, who sits on the children's museum board and is the designated volunteer driver for the exhibit, left Oak Lawn on Wednesday. He planned to drive straight through to Rochester, NY, for the Rochester Fire Department's stair climb on Sunday, Sept. 6. The exhibit will be making the rounds over the weekend of schools in Webster, NY, as well as the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation and other weekend fundraising and remembrance activities in recognition of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"We took it to the Kansas Firefighters Museum in Wichita for a stair climb," Egan said. "Firefighters put their hands on the beams before and after the climb. I saw firefighters crying."

In his travels with the beams, Egan, who's been scoutmaster to a whole generation of Oak Lawn kids, never ceases to be amazed by how quickly word spreads when the exhibit passes through small rural communities. Lone farmers sit on their tractors in fields, holding an American flag. Bagpipers play as the beams are carried into the exhibit space, and people pour out to the street to wave at Egan passing by.

"When I pull into towns and there are five police squad cars waiting to escort you, I'm very proud," Egan said. "I'm not a veteran, but it's my chance to give a little something back."

Have this wonderful World Trade Tower Beams Exhibit in your community by contacting Adam Woodworth at the Children's Museum in Oak Lawn by email, adam.woodworth@cmoaklawn.org, or by phone, 708-423-6709, ext. 201. Some costs are involved depending on how far the exhibit has to travel.