A mangled chunk of steel beams and concrete sits in a corner at the entrance of the Conover Branch Library.
The 1,500-pound piece of debris is part of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, found buried 70 feet below ground. The piece in Catawba County was one of 2,500 pieces distributed across the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, Conover Fire Chief Mark Stafford said.
Conover Fire Chief Mark Stafford looks at a piece of the North Tower housed at the Conover Branch Library. Stafford was one of the firefighters who retrieved the piece from New York in 2011.
Stafford was one of the firefighters who traveled to New York in 2011 to retrieve the artifact.
“The day we brought it in, we had so many folks that just stopped by the fire station because we didn't have a permanent home for it, so we kept it covered up (inside the fire station),” Stafford said. “The press release was put out for the general public to come and view it and touch it. Get their pictures made with it.”
People are also reading…
A copy of the 2011 press release hangs in a picture frame with other memorabilia surrounding the North Tower piece.
Twenty-five years after the attack, the tower piece now sits in a corner to the right of the staircase at the entrance of the Conover Branch Library located at 403 Conover Station SE.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the Twin Towers collapsed in New York City after two hijacked planes crashed into the buildings during a terrorist attack.
The attack killed 2,753 people from 90 different countries at the World Trade Center. Of those people, more than 400 were firefighters, paramedics and law enforcement officers. There were 184 people killed when a third airplane crashed into the Pentagon in Virginia, according to the release hung on the wall at the Conover Branch Library.
Another 40 people died in a fourth plane crash in Pennsylvania, according to the release.
“Knowing what happened to the 343 firefighters at this location (in New York), and seeing this piece of history here in the city of Conover means so much,” Stafford said. “It goes back to the fire service as a brotherhood.”
Stafford has seen every artifact housed in the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in New York City. The museum opened in 2014.
“We went up three years straight just so I could see everything (in the museum),” Stafford said. “I told my wife, I said, ‘We're going three years if that's what it takes.’”
Former Conover Fire Chief Mark Hinson and former Fire Engineer Mark Stafford examine the 9/11 remnant shortly after it arrived in Conover in 2011. Stafford is now the fire chief.
Stafford said the museum is an experience he will never forget.
“There's a lot more detail in the museum, and when I say detail, stuff like tools, helmets, bunker gear, apparatus, badges that they wore that was taken off,” Stafford said. “Name tags is all they found of some people.”
When Stafford went to pick up the piece of the North Tower to bring back to Conover in 2011, he reconnected with an old friend who was working in New York as a firefighter. The friend offered to take Stafford on a tour of the fire station.
“I ended up going up a year after that to stay with him in his apartment,” Stafford said. “He took me to every fire station that you can imagine that had anything to do with (9/11). That's what spurred me, once they got the memorial museum done, to go.”
