The Freedom Tower

If you live near Interstate 287 or Interstate 78 in Central New Jersey, you may be roused by early morning thunder Saturday, Aug. 23, don’t necessarily look for rain.
MyCentralJersey.com says the thunder will “probably the sound of hundreds of motorcycles, fire trucks and emergency vehicles escorting a memorial cross constructed out of steel beams taken from the remains of the World Trade Center. The steel cross is being transported from Brooklyn to its eventual permanent location at the Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company near the Pennsylvania Sept. 11, 2001, crash site of United Air Lines Flight 93.

“All told there should be about 1,000 motorcycles,” said retired Air Force staff sergeant Mike Angelastro, one of the lead organizers of the Iron and Steel — New York City to Shanksville Run.

“Cycles are joining us in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, all along the run,” Angelastro said. “We have people coming from far as Georgia for this.”

Eugene Stolowski is one of four FDNY firefighters who were injured in January 2005 when they jumped from the fourth-floor window of a Bronx building in a fire that took the lives of two other firefighters.

Stolowski now volunteers for the FDNY Fire Family Transport Foundation, a nonprofit, all-volunteer organization which provides transportation to the families of injured, ill or deceased New York City firefighters and is handling the memorial transport.

“The memorial is a cross section of steel with the letters WTC welded to it to represent the Trade Center buildings,” Stolowski said. “The base was built out in Shanksville in the shape of the Pentagon, and the cross will be mounted on it there.”