North Texas Firefighters Take 9/11 Memorial On The Road

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DALLAS (CBS 11 NEWS) - The Prosper Fire Department has a heavy metal piece of history from Ground Zero.

"Prosper had done some things for the New York Fire Department," said Clint Junell co-owner of Mr. Restore, a disaster recovery service that works closely with fire departments. "They wound up filling out an application to get a piece of the tower and they would up getting this fourteen foot, seven-thousand pound beam."

The piece of the World Trade Center is a focal point at the firefighters annual Dallas Stair Climb 9/11 Memorial where a firefighter representing each of the first responders killed climbs 110 flights of stairs in full emergency gear.

"For the firefighting community its the 343 guys that died and before the climb we touch it as a tribute to them," said Scott Himes, a Prosper firefighter.

Moving the beam to and from the stair climb every year gave the firefighters the idea for a mobile memorial.

"Some of the guys realized that if we could make it mobile we could touch a lot more people with it and a lot more people could see the piece and remember what happened at 9/11," Himes said.

"There's a whole generation of people who don't know what happened," Junell said. "I have a seven year old son who doesn't understand the gravity of what took place on September 11th."

The firefighters found sponsors linked them to Gas Monkey Garage who built the trailer. And now the fire department can link a piece of history to a generation born after 9/11. The beam is surrounded by shiny, red metal on the trailer. A chrome flag pole is attachable and a backdrop depicts emergency personnel in the rubble after the attacks. The big, rusted beam is front and center stretching almost the length of the trailer.

"We can take it schools or take it where we want to and make sure they know about and we can make sure they don't forget about it," Himes said.

"You get to put the names to the faces and see that was somebody's father, uncle brother," said Prosper Fire Department Captain Jason Graham. "Whoever wants it, we're going to try to get it out to each and every person that we can."

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