Students from the Concrete Industry Management program at California State University, Chico, and the CIM program at Middle Tennessee State University joined decorative concrete experts in building a memorial to honor firefighters who lost their lives during the Sept. 11 attack in New York City.
Students attending the 2010 World of Concrete show in Las Vegas helped create two eight-foot towers representing the silhouette of the World Trade Center. A highly reflective, faceted surface displays the names of 56 firefighters who died. The memorial will be reassembled and installed in a memorial park across the street from a firehouse in New York as part of Sept. 11 10th anniversary events in 2011.
The memorial was the idea of Ed Gruetzner, a firefighter who retired from the New York City Fire Department four months before 9/11 and lost many friends in the tragedy. Gruetzner, now an accomplished decorative concrete installer, discussed the idea of a memorial with Mike Eastergard, owner of PreiTech Corp., a manufacturer of forms for the building and concrete industry and a supporter of CIM programs. Eastergard volunteered his custom-concrete form expertise and suggested that they work with CIM students to create the memorial during World of Concrete. University students worked with the concrete mix and created sample panels before traveling to Las Vegas.
At the show, the students formed, mixed and placed the concrete, erected the completed panels, dismantled the memorial at the end of the event and carefully crated it in specially designed foam forms for shipment to New York.
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