Cranberry 9/11 ceremony ‘reflective, meditative’
By dawn’s light on Monday, Sept. 11, Cranberry Township Volunteer Fire Company hoisted the American flag over a “reflective, meditative space for people to remember the events of 9/11.”
“I don’t want to say it’s not a big deal. It is a big deal, but we don’t make a big ceremony out of it,” township Supervisor Bruce Hezlep said. “We just gather at first light and we raise our flag, typically from our ladder truck.”
Hezlep, former president of the fire company and a master firefighter, said the tradition began on that fateful day 22 years ago.
“We just kind of met ad hoc, and everybody just kind of found their way to the fire station that night,” he said. “We raised the flag and it was just kind of a, ‘Hey, we’re going to support our firefighters in New York City.’”
But the following year, and thereafter, the tradition stuck.
“We raise the flag from our ladder truck, someone leads us in prayer, we say the Pledge of Allegiance, we sing ‘The Star Spangled Banner,’” Hezlep said, “and then we have our assistant chief John Pristas play taps.”
The “lights out” bugle call is timed during the ceremony to coincide with major events during the terrorist attacks.
“He will play taps at the time both towers were hit, the time both towers fell, the time the Pentagon was hit, the time the plane went down in Shanksville,” Hezlep said. “Six different instances of taps being played.”
This year, Hezlep said the township chose to have the American Legion Riders of Lyndora lead taps.
“I don’t want to say it’s a formal ceremony, it’s kind of ad hoc,” he said. “But what’s kind of nice is that you get people that come every year throughout the day.”
The informal ceremony is centered around the fire company’s 9/11 memorial — featuring a piece of steel from the Twin Towers.
Hezlep said the township acquired the steel beam 10 years after the towers fells.
“We had an assistant fire chief here at the time, his name was Jeff Berneburg, and he approached the board,” he said. “I was president of our company at the time, and it took us about two years of paperwork and applications, and we finally acquired this steel in 2010 and brought it back here.”
At the time, Hezlep said he brought his then-9-year-old son Nathan — now a firefighter with the township — to pick up the steel.
“We picked up the steel, and they had a timeline of events, and he was reading the timeline,” he said. “He wasn’t old enough; he doesn’t remember anything about it.”
Breaking ground in 2011, the department’s memorial now features its own timeline alongside the steel alongside homages to the Twin Towers.
“So what we did was we got two granite replicas of the Twin Towers, and then those are set on a great big, flat piece of granite that has the city block of the World Trade Center area carved into it,” Hezlep said. “So, it’s kind of a replica of 9/11.”
Atop it lies the twisted steel from the towers.
As one of the few memorials in the region, the informal ceremony draws crowds from near and far according to Hezlep.
“Some of them leave stuff at the memorial, some of them will come over and have stories to tell you about, ‘Hey, I had a family member that we lost,’” he said. “It’s something that we take great pride in, because there’s only a couple of these in Western Pennsylvania.”
Hezlep said the crews often find challenge coins, flowers and even letters left at the quiet site after the ceremony.
“We’ve had notes to people that have passed,” he said. “It’s kind of hard sometimes when you go out there to pick up some of this stuff.”
Hezlep said he always tells the story of his daughter — then 6-years-old — and her experience with the towers’ steel as they brought it back to the township.
“My daughter knew about September 11th,” he said. “She was afraid to touch the steel because of what it represented.”
Ultimately, Hezlep said that was the affect he hoped the memorial had on each subsequent generation.
“We wanted it to be an educational resource for people in the community, and quite frankly, a whole generation has passed since 9/11,” he said. “So now, schoolkids come here, they can learn about it, and other people come here and reflect on the day and remember what happened.”
With crews retiring the flag at sunset, Hezlep reminded the public that the site is always open.
“It’s available 24 hours a day, five days a year,” he said. “Because that’s what we wanted to be — an educational resource for people in the community.”
Located on the southern end of the station — and with a new street sign to boot — Hezlep said he hoped the public would remember not only the tragedy but this site to honor it.
“The more people that know about it, the more people that visit it, the more the monument will serve its intended purpose,” he said.
