A Look Back at the Palos Heights Sept. 11 Memorial

They all remember where they were when they heard the news.  They all knew that they had to find a way to memorialize the moment for generations to come.

“We all felt that it would change our lives forever,” said Jeff Prestinario. “And it did. So many things have happened because of that day.”

Prestinario, an alderman in Palos Heights, led a committee that built a Sept. 11 memorial next to . It was a true team effort that was lead by local volunteers, police and firefighters and the city.

Palos Heights sits about 790 miles east of Ground Zero in New York City. But while the events of that day might have been local in their destruction, they were national in their impact.  It caused a shift in the American psyche, and for this group of volunteers it needed to be memorialized for generations to come.

They met for over a year poring over plans and finding local companies that would donate materials or offer discounted rates.

At one design meeting the city’s then police chief Howard Roseen sketched a rough design of the Twin Towers with the Pentagon in between.

“We knew we wanted it next to the (Veteran’s) Memorial and for it to compliment what was already there,” said Denise Hyker, one of the committee’s members.

Jack Clifford, another alderman for the city, built a model of the planned memorial out of wood as a way for residents to visualize what the completed project would look like.

“I built it and we put a donation box with it and took it around town,” Clifford said.

The model sat outside grocery stores and banks and the donation box soon began to fill. About 80 percent of the memorial was funded by donations, Prestinario said. Another source of fundraising was the city’s July 4 event.

The memorial features two pillars representing the Twin Towers with a pentagon in between. On the base a star is etched into the spot on a map where a jet crashed in Pennsylvania.  

Surrounding the sculpture is a paved and landscaped walkway that leads to the city’s veteran’s memorial.

“Everyone worked together on it and saw the value in what we were doing,” Hyker said. “We just never gave up and stuck with it.”

Volunteers like Ed Dombrowski, Tom Stuchly and Mike Casey remember spending hours landscaping around the memorial and raising funds. Local companies offered free or highly discounted materials to help the construction.

The memorial was dedicated on Nov. 11, 2004.

In the 10 years since the attacks a generation of children have been born who did not live through the confusion of that fall morning. In the coming years that day will shift from a memory to a historical event. But the stone memorial in Palos Heights will remain standing as a reminder of what happened that day.

Etched on the memorial is a quote from President George W. Bush, “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundations of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundations of America.”

Palos Heights will hold a ceremony in front of the memorial to mark the 10th Anniversary of Sept. 11 at 11 a.m.