9/11: Memorials across the Diocese show victims will never be forgotten

POIGNANT MEMORIAL  Even today, visitors to Father Judge’s grave in Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa leave a colorful array of religious and commemorative keepsakes of 9/11.

STIRLING  It could be as simple as sitting on a wooden bench that faces a colorful row of flowers planted in the ground or an inviting path of paving stones that leads gently to a tall wooden crucifix. Or it could be as dramatic as the sight of a twisted piece of steel taken from the “Ground Zero” disaster site at the World Trade Center or the quiet gravesite of a fallen hero of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

No matter the physical or natural environment, family and friends are grieving the unimaginable — their loved ones, who were killed in the terrorist attacks — and other persons can find comfort, peace and healing in the calming presence of the several 9/11 memorials and prayer gardens that dot the landscape of the Paterson Diocese. Even today, 20 years after the tragedy, these spiritual oases in the Church of Paterson continue to offer these friends and family still in mourning a measure of solace and a reminder to generations, who were born afterwards.

• Against the wooded grounds at the Shrine of St. Joseph here stands the breathtaking Tower of Remembrance as the most impressive 9/11-related memorial in the Diocese. An ascending column of bells — originally blessed and installed in 1960 at the Missionary Servants of the Most Holy Trinity’s Seminary in Monroe, Virginia, that had rung there until 1973 — fits between tall girders of rusted steel from the World Trade Center’s North Tower that reach up to the nearby trees.

Often, family members will sit next to a location on this Morris County-based tower, inscribed with the names of their loved ones. They might leave mementos, such as photographs, prayers, and letters to that particular loved one or items of significance, such as a fishing lore, left by a son, who enjoyed going fishing with his late father.

• In Passaic County, a six-foot-tall rusted piece of twisted steel from the World Trade Center gently rises into the air from the Memorial Garden of Our Lady of Consolation (OLC) Church, Wayne. This quiet piece of steel speaks loudly about the mass murder and destruction leveled on Sept. 11, 2001— as well as about the great bravery and national unity that followed. It’s the only such marker in Wayne that incorporates an actual piece of the World Trade Center, which stands in a corner of the Memorial Garden and which also honors of fallen veterans and parishioners.

• Not far from Wayne, one side of St. Paul Church, Clifton, showcases two six-foot wooden lattice trellises that stand tall and proud next to a waving American flag on the corner of Union and Second avenues. One quick glance, and you’ll notice they resemble the Twin Towers.

It’s far from a coincidence. Those pressure-treated wooden trellises stand as part of a larger “living” memorial to almost 3,000 victims of the World Trade Center terrorists’ attack, three of whom were affiliated with St. Paul’s. It includes a red Holland block patio with a wooden bench to give grieving families a place to reflect. This permanent “living” memorial is adorned with an L-shaped garden that wraps around the patio, ivy growing up the pressure-treated tower trellises and plants bookending the sides of the bench.

• In Wayne, a tall wooden cross at Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) Parish speaks of Jesus’ healing presence with its long shadows, if it’s a sunny afternoon. Visitors here to IHM’s Sept. 11 memorial garden, might notice that, if there is a sunny afternoon, the cross throws a shadow on two upright wooden poles. Those two poles — which flank the cross all in the center of the garden — represent the long-since-fallen World Trade Center twin towers, the garden is tucked in a wooded area on a hill to the right of the parish school.

The seven-foot cross — fashioned from pressure-treated wood — stands in the center of the garden. It is book ended by the two five-and-one half-feet high upright lengths of wood that symbolize the twin towers. The garden is especially poignant to the IHM faith community, some of whom lost family members or friends in the Sept. 11 attacks.

• Like the OLC monument, a memorial to Franciscan Father Mychal Judge in the cemetery of St. Joseph Parish in West Milford, incorporates a twisted remnant of a steel beam that was recovered from the World Trade Center site. This piece is embedded in its marble base. After his assignment as pastor of St. Joseph Parish in West Milford from 1979 to 1985, Father Judge served as a New York City fire chaplain and is listed as the first victim of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. Engraved on the front is “Mychal’s Prayer”: “Lord, take me where you want to go. Let me meet, who you want me to meet. Tell me what you want me to say and keep me out of your way.”

• Visitors to the grave of Franciscan Father Mychal Judge in the Franciscan section of Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Totowa would never know that the deceased was a hero of 9/11 by reading his modest footstone. In the Franciscan tradition, it simply reads: “Rev. Mychal Judge OFM 1933-2001.” Yet the colorful array of keepsakes that visitors leave at the grave after they pray speaks to his heroism on the day of the World Trade Center attacks and their love for him. Commemorative items have included rosaries, a bronze replica of the famed firefighter’s cross of Ground Zero rising above his footstone, and a Manhattan refrigerator magnet with the words “Fire Dept., America's Heroes.”