On Saturday, September 11 at 8:25 am, Clarkson University and members of our greater regional community will gather for an outdoor ceremony at Clarkson’s World Trade Center Memorial Sculpture (#48 on map) for our annual remembrance ceremony. Please join your fellow Golden Knights that morning to mark the twentieth year since the attacks on American soil on 9/11/2001. Almost 3,000 people perished, including four Clarkson University alumni.
The steel in Clarkson’s World Trade Center Memorial is from the 55th floor of the World Trade Center’s south tower. Clarkson alumnus Michael Bielawa ’85 was among those 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 is 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, Computer Programmer with Marsh McLennan; Paul R. Hughes ’85, Computer Analyst Supervisor with Marsh USA Insurance Company; Richard J. O’Connor ’75, Sr. Vice President Marsh-McLennan; and R. Mark Rasweiler ’70, Vice President Marsh-McLennan, is engraved above a light installed in the foundation of the structure, and at night the lights shine upon the structural beams.
If inclement weather forces the event to go inside to the Student Center, the University requests only vaccinated individuals to attend beyond their campus community members. Mask wearing is required on campus indoors by everyone.