Local Welders Handle 9/11 Steel With Respect

When word got around of , Ed Heil, a union pipefitter, shot off an email to the community leaders organizing the project.

“You won’t find a better welder than me,” Heil wrote.

A 41-year member of Chicago Pipefitters Local 597, Heil and two other volunteer welders worked through a brutal Chicago heat wave soldering faces and pictures onto spires

“Ed came out of the woodwork just when we needed him,” said Dr. Sandra Bury, a member of the Oak Lawn Rotary and chair of Monumental Oak Lawn that is overseeing the 9/11 installation. “Ed said he wanted to be part of this. He brought his own electric arc welder.”

Although he is of the Vietnam era, Heil never got called up. His fate was spared by drawing a high number for his birth date in the draft lottery of 1969, an arrangement used by the Selective Service System that determined the order of call for induction.

“These days I think about it,” Heil said. “I never got called up. If I had, I would have gone. The Good Lord chose another path for me. My destiny was to work the rest of my life.”

, Bury said she was amazed by the dexterity of the 61-year-old Heil.

“He worked all bent over,” Bury said. “He had a very jolly temperament and was happy to do anything we wanted.”

For Heil, working with the 9/11 steel was almost a spiritual experience. He thought a lot about his brother pipefitters—those who built the Twin Towers and those who picked up the pieces and put them on trucks as crime evidence.

“All those guys on the other end that did the demolition and dismantled those beams loading them on to the trucks,” Heil said, “I just wanted them guys to know they had a brother pipefitter to meet them on the other end.”

Pete Perisin, another volunteer pipefitter, joined his friend Heil out of a sense of patriotism. He also had another reason for getting involved: Sunday, his daughter, Samantha Joy, turns 10.

Perisin was focused on his wife’s contractions and not watching the morning news the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. Around 9 a.m., he ran outside to put his wife’s overnight bag in the car.

“My neighbor asked me if I realized what was happening,” Perisin recalled. “I thought he meant the baby, but he told me that a plane had just flown into the World Trade Center. He told me to go back in the house and turn on the news.”

Throughout his wife’s labor, their eyes were turned toward the television watching the images of planes flying into the World Trade Center being played over and over.

“For me it was surreal that this was happening to my country and we’re having our first child at the same time,” Perisin said. “I was in a state of shock from the terrorist acts but again overjoyed that we had a wonderful, healthy baby girl.”

Perisin said he felt honored to be part of the creative process working with artist Blome turning and twisting the 9/11 steel.

“To touch a piece of Ground Zero was kind of neat. It didn’t sink in until we worked on the project,” Perisin said. “At the end of the day, this is going to be a permanent monument that’s going to outlive myself and probably my daughter.”

Oak Lawn will dedicate the 9/11 First Responders Monument this Sunday, Sept. 11, at 10 a.m. at 95^th Street and Museum Drive, next to the Oak Lawn Metra Station. Free parking is available in the parking tower.

This is one of a series of 9-11 portraits assembled by the Patch network for 9/11: The Decade After, a special report for Huffington Post. Find more photos on the Action America Facebook page.