On Tuesday, September 11, the Clarkson University campus community and members of the local community will gather at Clarkson’s World Trade Center Memorial Sculpture at 8:25 a.m. for Clarkson’s annual 9/11 remembrance ceremony. The memorial is located across the road from the Rowley Laboratories building (#14 on the map at http://internal.clarkson.edu/about/clarkson_map.pdf).
The event is open to the public and members of local rescue squads, fire or police departments, the military, and veterans are invited to attend in uniform. Parking is available across the road in the Educational Resources Center (ERC) parking lot (#17 on the map at http://internal.clarkson.edu/about/clarkson_map.pdf).
In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will take place in the Student Center forum (#15 on the map at http://internal.clarkson.edu/about/clarkson_map.pdf).
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 fund-raising led to the installation of a memorial at Clarkson in 2005.
This site was dedicated as a memorial to the four alumni’s lives 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 upon the structural beams.
Clarkson University educates the leaders of the global economy. One in five alumni already leads as an owner, CEO, VP or equivalent senior executive of a company. With its main campus located in Potsdam, New York, and additional graduate program and research facilities in the Capital Region and Beacon, N.Y., Clarkson is a nationally recognized research university with signature areas of academic excellence and research directed toward the world’s pressing issues. Through more than 50 rigorous programs of study in engineering, business, arts, education, sciences and the health professions, the entire learning-living community spans boundaries across disciplines, nations, and cultures to build powers of observation, challenge the status quo and connect discovery and innovation with enterprise.