World Trade Center

Washington County Emergency Services officials drove to New York City on Thursday to pick up a 6-foot steel beam that had been part of the World Trade Center buildings when terrorists attacked on Sept. 11, 2001. The beam will be unveiled on Sept. 13 at 7 p.m. during a public ceremony at the Emergency Services Remembrance Garden in Hagerstown's City Park. Verna Brown, emergency management coordinator for Washington County, said members of the Washington County Citizen Corps Committee began working two years ago to get an artifact from ground zero of the attack site.

With reverence, humility and gratitude, local officials on Friday remembered the horror of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the brave attempts by emergency crews to save lives. Hagerstown Mayor Robert E. Bruchey II, who spoke at the event, said he was getting ready to go to work when he saw news coverage of the first crash at the World Trade Center and figured it was a pilot's terrible mistake. When a second plane crashed, Bruchey said, he knew Americans' lives would change forever.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A city commission on Tuesday denied landmark status to a building near the World Trade Center site, freeing a group to convert the property into an Islamic community center and mosque that has drawn national opposition. The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted 9-0, saying the 152-year-old building blocks from the site of the Sept. 11 attacks wasn't special or distinctive enough to meet criteria to qualify as a landmark. Commissioners also said that other buildings from the era were better examples of the building's style.

NEW YORK (AP) -- Philip Hayes was 67 and had been retired from the Fire Department more than 20 years on the morning when he rushed to the burning World Trade Center. His family says he rescued children from a day care and then headed to the south tower, where he died. His son, Philip Hayes Jr., was among the mourners who read aloud the names of the lost Friday on the eighth anniversary of 9/11 -- a day when the nation, in rituals of grief and simple acts of volunteerism, rekindled the spirit of service embodied by his father.

RANSON, W.Va. -- Frank McCluskey on Thursday clued in about 125 people on what it was like to be a firefighter in New York City the day of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. McCluskey, provost and executive vice president of American Public University in Charles Town, was a volunteer fire chief in suburban New York who responded to the World Trade Center. At a 9/11 remembrance at Independent Fire Co. along Fairfax Boulevard, McCluskey recalled how emergency radio frequencies were jammed and how cell phone networks were overwhelmed.

Six years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, Islamic extremists hijacked four commercial airliners. Two planes were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York. A third plane was crashed into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed into a field in rural Pennsylvania. Here are recollections of that day from members of the Pulse writing team. Elizabeth Kramer, 15, of Hagerstown When I heard about the Sept. 11 attacks, I was in the middle of science class at Paramount Elementary School.

"I thought it was interesting the person blasted Lt. Gov. Brown for coming up here and talking about the budget deficit and what needs to be done. That's more than can be said for the Ehrlichs. Mr. O'Malley and Mr. Brown have only been in office less than six months, so where do you think that deficit came from? The last administration. At least he came up here to show some interest in Western Maryland. " - Hagerstown suburb "During the Vietnam period, Americans were hated all over the world.

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