The Four Peaks Rotary Club in Fountain Hills is once again preparing its 9/11 remembrance memorial for the upcoming 25th anniversary of the attacks.
The new memorial will be on display on Sept. 11 at the amphitheater at Fountain Park at 12925 N. Saguaro Blvd., according to a press release.
The project originally began several years ago when past club President Bill Beamish put up 411 flags at Fountain Park every year, commemorating the first responders who died when the Twin Towers collapsed.
After he passed away, the torch was passed to previous club President Todd Harris, who ended up expanding the project to something more elaborate.
“I came up with the idea of doing a scale model of the Twin Towers. so we went to a sheet metal company that had a past Rotarian and provided the sheet metal. And I went to somebody I knew that did decals, and we had decals on all sides of the two buildings, and this is literally built to scale so people could appreciate what the buildings look like,” Harris said. “We duplicated the 411 flags representing all the first responders that passed. We do not repeat this every year, but we repeat every five years, and here we are at the 25th.”
Current club President Frank Robinson and his fellow Rotarians are going to be up early setting up the memorial on Sept. 11,
“I think it means a lot to the club. We install flags around Fountain Park on Memorial Day. I can’t tell you how many people will just comment on what it means to them to see the flags, and a lot of thanks goes out to our club for doing it,” Robinson said. “I think the same thing will be true here. People will appreciate the opportunity to see the display, to think about what it means to them and to pay tribute to a number of people that were there trying to help on Sept. 11 and didn’t make it.”
This memorial is also a chance for the club to give back, Robinson said.
“One of the things that we’ve been looking to do is give back to our own first responders, the Fountain Hills Crisis Response Team,” Robinson said. “...What we’d like to do is maybe have people that are interested in providing a little bit of support to the Crisis Response Team...they get no funding for what they do...so in our booth we’ll have a little opportunity then for residents to contribute to the Crisis Response Team if they’d like to do so.”
As a former volunteer fireman himself, Harris said that this memorial is special for him.
“I was affiliated with a fire department for 35 years as a volunteer, so this is pretty special to me,” Harris said. “I had the opportunity to travel to New York for the memorial, and that was really something deep to the heart, and this is rather special thinking about the fraternity that I had with the firemen.”
Robinson said that he hopes people, even those who weren’t alive on that day in 2001, are able to gain appreciation for the work of first responders.
“I hope they can get an appreciation for the fire and police services. This documents what these individuals are confronting every day of their career,” Robinson said.
After graduating from Arizona State University's Cronkite School in spring 2022, Connor Van Ligten spent a little over year as a reporter for WWL-TV in New Orleans before finding themselves back in Phoenix in October of 2023. Now back in the Valley and writing for the Mesa Independent and the Daily Independent, Connor is ready to tell meaningful stories and report on important civic issues facing Mesa. Connor is a big fan of the 49ers, Warriors, pro wrestling, anime, dogs and fighting video games.
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