'Hallowed Material' Becomes 9/11 Memorial in Corralitos

On the anniversary of a dark day in U.S. history, firefighters and community members in Corralitos marked another solemn occurrence.

Firefighters at the CalFire station in Corralitos unveiled a memorial to 9/11 on Wednesday, .

The small segment of a steel I-beam, a piece of the Twin Towers, transformed into a work of art by Miya Ando, a Corralitos-raised artist who lives in New York City.

Firefighters mounted the I-beam atop a copper box in front of the fire house on Eureka Canyon Road. The beam still has concrete and chunks of rebar attached to the bottom of the steel.

"It's an incredible honor to have been granted this piece of hallowed material," Ando said at the dedication ceremony Wednesday morning. "... It's my hope that with this piece we're able to pay homage to the victims, to the emergency responders, to the heroes."

It was not a coincidence that the sculpture dedication fell on Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor Day.

"9/11 was the first time since Pearl Harbor ... that Americans have been attacked on their own soil," CalFire San Mateo-Santa Cruz Unit Chief John Ferriera said, drawing parallels between the two tragic events.

A large contingent of firefighters from CalFire, Watsonville and Aptos/La Selva attended the ceremony. Quietly, some marveled at the width of the I-beam. Others explained how they used pieces of scrap copper to construct the base for the artwork and build a new copper rain gauge to match the sculpture.

"This memorial will be here long after most of us are gone," Ferriera said.

She was parked in front of the fire house, catching the attention of Capt. Lawrence Erickson, the fire captain explained to the crowd Wednesday. Fire agencies had been warned to watch for suspicious vehicles targeting fire stations, but instead of a threat he found the soft-spoken artist who split her childhood between a Ryder Road home and a Buddhist temple in Japan.

Ando wanted to create a 9/11 memorial for the Corralitos community. She and Erickson collaborated to acquire a piece of the Twin Towers through the Port Authority in New York and New Jersey. More than 2,000 pieces, mostly support beams, have been given out to communties in all 50 states and abroad in the past few years.

"It was quite an ordeal to get a piece because a lot of people were asking for them," Erickson said.

Of the thousands of applications, Corralitos was granted that small segment of steel. It's the only one on the Central Coast.

Ando worked with the piece of corroded steel over the course of several months. A thick volume listing the names and photos of all the 9/11 victims sat on the Buddhist altar in her home during the project. The work was intense, physically and "in the psyche and in the spirit," she said.

The sculpture arrived in Corralitos on Sept. 9 and, two days later on Sept. 11, Ando got to town to unpack the art with firefighters. Together, they installed it in front of .

A flag gifted to volunteer firefighter Alex Leman, who works from CalFire's nearby Loma Prieta station, by the New York City Fire Depatment covered the memorial until Ando lifted the flag. Leman went to Ground Zero after the terrorist attack to help with cleanup efforts.

"She did her magic," Erickson said.

Ando, an internationally known artist, also created a 30-foot 9/11 memorial for London.

Though the Corralitos installation is modest by comparision, it evokes powerful emotions.

Jake Hess, a CalFire battalion chief in Santa Cruz County who was a childhood friend of Ando's, said he hopes the sculpture can be a "little gentle reminder to us all of the tragedy that happened on that day."

He urged people to visit the fire station after dark, when the sculpture is illuminated.

"It'll put the hair on the back of your neck up and give you goosebumps," Hess said.

Ando said she hopes the memorial can put some light back into the community. She thinks of it as a prayer "that we may never have something of this nature happen again."