Ash on Stone: Reflecting on 9-11

The Irish Hunger Memorial in Manhattan. Photo from https://www.nyctourism.com/attractions-tours/irish-hunger-memorial/

Last week as so many reflected on the events of September 11, 2001, I was reminded of a time I was at the site. Not on that horrific day, but shortly after. My own rememberance follows.

First a bit of biographical information. During the spring of 2001 Geraldine and I worked

for an Irish company, Irish Natural Stone, which provided pavers and tiles of Irish Blue

Limestone used in The Irish Hunger Memorial which was being built in lower

Manhattan during the summer.

Before dawn on September 11, 2001, a parade of spinning cement trucks lined up on

Vesey St. and North End Avenue in lower Manhattan, ready to pour the huge foundation

of the Irish Hunger Memorial, adjacent to the twin towers of World Trade Center. As

the sun rose on a perfect autumn day the first trucks pulled in next to the site ready to

pour. At 8:46 workers on the monument site witnessed American Airlines Flight 11crash

into the north tower. They fled their stations as quickly as possible after witnessing the

beginning of our American nightmare.

No more need be said about the minutes and days which followed. We all

remember. This memory is of a visit I made to the nearly completed monument several

months later. It was mid-November when Geraldine and I heard from our partners in

County Clare that a pallet of large-sized, 2’ thick paver slabs was left over. We were

given a mission of collecting the stone and bringing it back to our Boston warehouse.

Renting a large step-van, she and I drove to Manhattan on Saturday, told that the

gate would be left open for us. We pulled into the site, backed up to the pallet and

donned heavy work gloves and steel-toed boots. Forewarned about the danger of dust

still present in lower Manhattan, we also strapped on particle masks.

With a wisk broom I swept two inches of dust of the first layer of stone slabs,

some of which weighed eighty pounds or more. I lifted pieces up to the back of the truck

where Gere moved them around to fit squarely on pallets. In between each layer of

stone was an inch of gray and brown dust with white and brown specks of ash from

what we thought must have been burned concrete and steel from the fallen buildings.

After a couple hours of work, we stopped to rest and eat sandwiches, our backs

and arms aching. Taking off our masks, we both began to cough and blow our noses.

We laughed at each other because our faces were streaked with lines where sweat

washed away the dust.

Suddenly she burst into tears. “Bob, do you think there are human ashes mixed

into the dust?”

We both cried then, closed the van rear and left, locking the gate as instructed

and leaving behind half of the tainted stone.