Nassau County officials broke ground on a new $350,000 Sept. 11 memorial in East Meadow — which will replace an aging monument that has an engraved typo in its plaque.
County Executive Bruce Blakeman joined with fire officials and other elected officials at the 9/11 Memorial in Eisenhower Park to announce the project ahead of the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
“This particular memorial was beautiful when it was first unveiled, but it’s tired — and we have a commitment to excellence in this county, a commitment that everything that we do, we do our best,” Blakeman told reporters.
“And this new memorial will help us to do our best to remember those who gave their life, in the line of duty, a debt that never can be fully repaid by the residents of Nassau County, the metropolitan area, our state, or our country,” said Blakeman, whose nephew Tommy Jurgens’ was killed during the terror attacks and has his name on the memorial.
The old memorial came with images of badges of first responders, with a “Court Officer” mispelled as “Court Oficer” on one badge.
The Nassau County legislature recently passed a unanimous resolution to partly fund the new memorial with $150,000 in taxpayer money. The remaining $200,000 came from donations, including $100,000 from the Peter and Jerry Dejana Foundation.
First responders from Nassau who were on the scene during 9/11 expressed their gratitude for the new memorial, and said those who were taken that day deserve a more modern memorial.
“Its much needed — it’s faded, it’s cracking — and if you look, the spelling is wrong,” Ralph Esposito, the chairman of the Nassau County Firefighters Memorial Endowment Association, told The Post.
“This is very, very emotional for me — I was there for almost 30 days on that pile [of rubble] working,” said Esposito.
The new memorial will list all 19 Nassau County firefighters killed in the 2001 attacks, along with 30 more who have died in the years since from 9/11-related illnesses — a number officials said tragically continues to grow.
