Jeffersontown unveils 9/11 memorial

As seen on Wave3

By David Ochoa

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WAVE) - Hundreds of miles away from the attacks you’d probably think there isn’t much connection to Jeffersontown. But at the ceremony Sunday, stories were told that show how far the ripples reached.

A crowd gathered to watch the unveiling of the brand new monument.

“We want the emotion of the steel that that day happened to resound beyond this one square, Mayor Bill Dieruf said. “We wanted to go across the United States to unite the people here to say we never want this to happen again.”

Mayor Bill Dieruf told a story of a Jeffersomtown woman who was in one of the towers on 9/11.

Dieruf said she was on the 42nd floor when the fire alarm went off. She went down 20 floors before being told she could go back up to her office if she wanted. The woman decided to keep going down.

“She kept hearing sounds hitting the ground,” Dieruf said. “She thought it might be bricks, it was actually bodies hitting the ground.”

She wasn’t the only one who was personally connected to the attacks.

Jeffersontown Police Chief Rick Sanders worked for the DEA at the time and was across the street from the Pentagon.

“Bill Brown an agent said, ‘Rick look to the west.’ And I saw American Airlines flight 77 approaching from the west,” Chief Rick Sanders said. “Over the crystal city mall and strike the west side of the Pentagon.”

Sanders says it was surreal, but the unity he saw after the attack is what he says is most important.

After all the speeches, a man and a woman were the last few to approach the monument.

With a picture in hand, they touch the steel.

The picture is of New York Firefighter Captain Timothy Stackpole.

“He was on his day off, and got the call,” Robert Foster, Jeffersontown resident said. “He was off-duty, had just finished his shift. Just like many of the other ones, he didn’t hesitate, he got back on his shift and perished in the second tower.”

Robert Foster is good friends with Stackpole’s godson, who is a New York firefighter. Foster brings Stackpole’s picture to memorials like this in order to spread his story.

“It brings you to tears, Foster said. “When you really stop and think about the numbers and the casualties that took place and that Jtown actually has an actual piece of the towers that are no longer there.”

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