VIDEO: Hopatcong Honors 9/11 With WTC Steel

The memories are hazy for Katelyn Downey. She was in second grade. The voice over the loud speaker tried explaining. But what she knows she's learned through innumerable stories from friends and the TV.

Still, the 18-year-old waited for an hour in the hot sun for two steel beams from the World Trade Center arrive in Hopatcong on Thursday. Downey knew the artifacts would highlight the borough's 9/11 monument, set to be unveiled on the 10th anniversary of the attacks that killed thousands.

"I didn't really understand what was going on until I got home and my mom told me what was on the news," she said. "In hindsight, I can see how it affected us … It changed pretty much everything."

Downey was one of more than 50 people who waited at for the beams, which arrived around 1 p.m. after a journey from John F. Kennedy Airport's Hangar 17, a home for much of the 9/11 debris. The beams, each 9 feet tall, weighing a combined 4,500 pounds, were loaded onto a borough truck and escorted to Hopatcong by police and fire department vehicles.

The steel will bookend a pentagon-shaped marble slab. A warped hunk of Twin Towers metal will sit atop the monument, along with five pavers detailing important moments from the tragedy. The monument will sit outside borough hall, near a planned firefighter's tribute.

"People have been asking me, 'What does this represent?'" Mayor Sylvia Petillo said. "And, really, these two beams really represent the horror of the whole tragedy. And as Mike Rahill, our chief of the fire department as we spoke the other days was saying, the firemen and the 3,000 people, their lives are embedded in these pieces of steel.

"Although the terrorists wanted to destroy us and divide us, they failed," she continued. "Because what they did was they united us. And out of that white ash rose the American spirit."

DPW Superintendent Ron Jobeless said standing inside Hangar 17, staring at the 9/11 debris, was surreal.

"It was unbelievable," he said. "There was a sign standing in front of us for the Port Authority that looked like it was untouched. Like it was brand new. How does that exist? And then there was a fire truck next to me and you couldn't even identify it. Knowing that there were guys sitting in that truck … police cars and vehicles that were just beyond recognition.

"You go inside of a place like that and see those things," he continued, "it just reinforces for me why our boys are over there fighting."

Jobeless said it was impossible to know where the beams once stood. Petillo said the process to get the beams took months of cooperation between the Port Authority and Petillo. She credited Sen. Steve Oroho for writing a letter on the borough's behalf.

Hopatcong resident Therese DePierro said the artifacts will serve as a teaching point.

"This will give us a place to go, to reflect," she said. "It will also give us a place to teach our children."

The beams will be stored at the DPW building.