Truck bearing WTC steel tours nation

By Ylan Q. Mui ~ The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- As a truck carrying 16 tons of twisted steel from the World Trade Center stopped outside the Pentagon, Frances Waller got out of her patrol car and ran up to it with open arms.

"Hey! I wanna hug you!" she said to one of the organizers of the tour that brought the wreckage to Washington.

Waller, an officer with the Defense Protective Service, then snapped pictures of the scene in every permutation possible: in front of the steel, in front of the tour bus that accompanied the truck, with her fellow officers, with the tour group.

Her excitement was one of many reactions that the mangled steel beams evoked as they were driven through the streets of Washington on Tuesday. Tourists paused to stare as the 18-wheeler and its police escort traveled down Constitution Avenue. As the caravan passed the Washington Monument, bicyclists on the side of the road cheered and waved U.S. flags. One woman on the Mall placed her right hand over her heart as the truck went by.

12-day tour

The Washington visit was part of a 12-day trek through 23 cities that will end in California. The tour's sponsor, a nonprofit group called Freedom's Flame, plans to melt down the steel and use it to build two memorials, one to be located in New York and the other in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif.

The project is the brainchild of Dennis Stout, who lives in Rancho Cucamonga and is district attorney for San Bernardino County. He wanted to commemorate the police officers and firefighters who responded Sept. 11. Within a month of the terrorist attacks, he had hooked up with sculptor Lawrence Noble of San Bernadino and architect William Lecky of Ai Architects in Washington, who was involved in the development of the Vietnam Veterans and Korean war memorials. Now Stout is trying to raise the $12 million needed to fund the project.

Stout has big dreams. Both memorials will feature a staircase wrapped around a 35-foot-high wall sculpted into a flame. There will be seven-foot statues of people rushing down the steps and around the base, and of firefighters and police officers fighting their way up the stairs and into the fire.

"It's the counter-tension between people pouring out and the firemen and policemen rushing in that's really at the heart of the concept of the memorial," Lecky said.

Freedom's Flame hopes to raise the $12 million through corporate sponsorships and sales of T-shirts, posters and commemorative coins during the tour. The tour group's lodging and food, as well as the 18-wheeler carrying the steel, have been donated; even the tour bus driver is a volunteer.

Raising money

During its stop in Philadelphia, the group raised $2,000 in half an hour. But the reception it received was worth much more, Lecky said. Several hundred people turned out for a ceremony. As the truck carrying the wreckage drove into the city, firefighters saluted while standing on the ladders of engines parked on an Interstate 95 overpass.

Washington, for the most part, kept a stiff upper lip but an open heart. About 40 police officers and emergency workers showed up at a ceremony at the Pentagon to pay their respects. One worker silently slipped Lecky a sliver of limestone from the Pentagon wall that was hit by the hijacked airliner. Later, the group received a bigger piece, smeared with tar and still smelling of fuel.