Turning tragedy into tribute BY JENNIFER TODD
Intelligencer Journal Staff
Glenn Usdin recalled peering at the crushed helmet and ripped coat
that belonged to Jonathan Ielpi, a New York City firefighter who died
in the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"I kept thinking, 'That's his actual gear. That's what he was
wearing when he went into the tower.' It was an incredibly moving
moment," Usdin said Monday of his visit last weekend to the 9/11
Tribute Center in New York.
The moment was especially moving for Usdin because the 29-year-old Ielpi was the son of a close friend.
Usdin and Lee Ielpi met about 40 years ago when Ielpi was a New York
City firefighter and Usdin ran with a company on the outskirts of the
city. When Usdin moved to Lancaster County in 1989, the two maintained
their friendship.
After Sept. 11, Usdin mourned not only fellow firefighters, he mourned a friend's loss.
"Lee was devastated," Usdin said. "He knows Jonathan died doing his
job, helping others -- being a firefighter, you've got to accept what
comes with the job. But what happened that day is not something anyone
could have prepared for."
But Usdin watched as his friend took that devastation and turned it
into something positive, helping to found the 9/11 Families Association
and then aiding in the concept and design of the $3.4 million Tribute
Center across the street from ground zero.
"What they've done there is amazing," Usdin said. "There are
pictures of almost all of the 2,900 people who were killed that day, a
chronology of events, an exhibit on how the towers were built, and --
one of the most incredible things -- a room with over 27,000 notes
stuck to the walls from children all over the world. It's really
something to see."
The center, funded by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
and Lower Manhattan Development Corp., opened last year and is designed
to be an interim museum until the official memorial is completed on the
twin towers' site sometime in 2009.
Last weekend, as he stood at ground zero, Usdin said he thought of the nearly 30 people he knew who perished there.
And every day he looks at the piece of glass on his desk -- a
remnant of the World Trade Center -- and thinks of those, like Lee
Ielpi, whose lives will never be the same.
"A lot of people have gone back to their lives since that day, but
for some, there is no going back," he said. "For families and friends
and even largely for people living in New York, their world changed
forever."
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