The public is welcome to join Clarkson University students, faculty and staff as we gather at Clarkson’s World Trade Center Memorial Sculpture at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 11 for Clarkson’s annual 9/11 remembrance ceremony. The memorial is located across the road from the Rowley Laboratories building and is #48 on the Website campus map. Rain location for the ceremony is the Student Center Forum (#41 on map).
Members of local rescue squads, fire or police departments, the military, and veterans are welcome to attend in dress uniform and stand with our Army and Air Force ROTC.
On September 11, 2001, almost 3,000 people perished in the terrorist attacks on American soil, including four Clarkson University alumni. The steel in Clarkson’s World Trade Center Memorial is from 55th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower. Clarkson alumnus Michael Bielawa ’85 was one of a group who led the 9/11 clean-up at the World Trade Center. After his first-hand experience with the disaster, Bielawa requested that the New York City Office of Emergency Management donate steel from the World Trade Center to Clarkson to be used for a memorial. Several years of planning and fundraising led to the installation of a memorial at Clarkson in 2005.
This site, located on the highest elevation of the University’s campus in Potsdam, was dedicated as a memorial to the four Clarkson alumni who were lost in the World Trade Center attacks. Each of the alumni’s names, Peter A. Klein ’87, Paul R. Hughes ’85, Richard J. O’Connor ’75, and R. Mark Rasweiler ’70, is engraved above a light installed in the foundation of the structure, and at night the lights shine up on the structural beams.
