WTC beam memorialized

WEST LAFAYETTE -- A 400-pound section of a steel beam that once was part of the World Trade Center has been given to the city for display in a portable memorial to the victims and heroes of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.\nMore than two dozen people were on hand Sunday as the beam arrived at a city fire station.\nPatti O'Callaghan of West Lafayette was moved to tears by the beam's arrival. Her cousin, Danny O'Callaghan, was among the 343 New York firefighters who died when the trade center's south tower collapsed.\n"All my brothers and sisters are in New York. Most of my cousins are in New York. I'm the only one that's out here," O'Callaghan said. "And so it's really important to me to have this."\nHer sister, Susan Mitchell, is the head of New York operations at the U.S. Customs Service, and was instrumental in arranging the retrieval of the steel from a Staten Island landfill for the West Lafayette memorial.\nIn addition to the steel beam, the memorial also will include a U.S. flag that flew over the Pentagon, a certificate signed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and, it is hoped, a Pennsylvania state flag or some other reminder of those who died in the crash in rural Pennsylvania of the hijacked jetliner that missed its target.\nFire Chief Ron Ford and others came up with the idea for the memorial about six months after the attacks.\n"I thought, 'What would be any more appropriate than a piece of steel or something from the trade center, something from the Pentagon and actually something from Pennsylvania,'" Ford said.