STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
A nonprofit group has been trucking a piece of 9/11 history around this country. It's a huge steel beam from the ruins of the World Trade Center. Today, it reaches the White House. NPR's Quil Lawrence was there in an earlier stop in a New York town.
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QUIL LAWRENCE, BYLINE: An honor guard of New York City police and firefighters stood at attention as the truck pulled in a plaza in West Point, New York.
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LAWRENCE: The sides of the flatbed fold open, and there's a rusted steel beam caked with concrete.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: It's pretty impressive.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Yeah.
LAWRENCE: Several hundred people are gathered under a tent here for the event. In the front row are four soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor.
KENNETH J DAVID: My name is Kenneth J. David, and I earned a Medal of Honor as a PFC.
LAWRENCE: Private First Class Kenneth David repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire and saved his Army company in Vietnam 56 years ago. He remembers September 11, but he knows there are many people here who don't.
DAVID: Always remember who we are and what we stand for and try not to let it happen again.
LAWRENCE: That's the point of this project launched by the Tunnel to Towers Foundation, which builds homes for disabled veterans and first responders. The name honors Stephen Siller, a firefighter who ran through the tunnel from Brooklyn to Ground Zero, where he died. His brother Frank chairs the foundation.
FRANK SILLER: It's personal. And a lot of people here went overseas and served, and thank God the ones that are here, you know, survived. But, you know, over 7,000 men and women who served our country died on the global war on terror.
LAWRENCE: People line up to get a look at the steel beam. They can touch it, take pictures. Helena (ph) and Marylin Dooley (ph) are starting eighth and tenth grade.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #1: We can learn about how, like, heroic some of these people were that we've never known about before from these, like, memorials and stuff.
UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT #2: I also want to learn my American history, and, like, what happened and how, like, heroic these people were to help everybody.
LAWRENCE: They came with their mom, Chrissy Dooley (ph). She was living in Manhattan and saw the towers fall. She moved out of the city soon after.
CHRISSY DOOLEY: Like, two years after 9/11, I moved up to the Hudson Valley. It was so hard. Between anthrax in the subways and constant evacuations, and then there was the blackout right after, and I think it was just a lot of people really struggled afterwards, and those are, like, the unspoken stories. It was really a challenging time.
LAWRENCE: She says she's been trying all these years to explain to her kids the size of it - the weight of that day - and how this 8-1/2-ton steel beam is just a fraction of it.
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Please bow your heads and join me in a moment of silence in honor of those who made the supreme sacrifice.
May they never be forgotten.
LAWRENCE: Quil Lawrence, NPR News, West Point, New York. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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