Would you believe the legacy and respect for the brave firefighters responding to the World Trade Center attacks reigns true not just to Westfield State, but even to students who weren’t even participating in the campus’ event for that morning? That students would take it upon themselves of their own accord to make the climb for no reason other than feeling a sense of personal obligation for those who lost their lives?
On the morning of September 11, 2024, Westfield State University held an event at the ELY Campus Center to show their Student Government Association (SGA) what it was like for the many firefighters who 23 years ago braved the 110 story climb up the stairs of the World Trade Center and ended up giving the ultimate sacrifice. While attending students had access to computers outside ELY complete with PowerPoints and messageboards to leave personal comments about the attacks and learn more about them, the various members of the SGA were being fitted to full firefighters uniforms and given equipment for their backs weighing approximately 80 lbs additional to their own body masses, and asked to climb as many steps as they could on the Campus Center’s stairmaster machines.
An important factor to these climbers and this event as a whole revolves around the many students’ ages. As Westfield State’s Robert Vigneault, an organizer of this event, acknowledges in his opening speech, that for many Americans being asked now where they were on that fateful morning “The new answer is ‘I wasn’t born yet.’” This quote seems to ring true for many people participating in the event, particularly Sam Lemanski, Westfield State’s Director of Emergency Response and Risk Management, also felt it important that the legacy and memory remains for this tragedy, stating that “sharing that, the feelings that I had, being an eighth grader at the time, and carrying that on to the next generation who didn’t get those feelings” is very important to him and “it’s important to reflect and remember and I hope to share that, those memories that I have.”
As for the SGA climbers themselves, Justin Wald, after personally climbing several dozens of steps himself, said that it was very important to “get that newfound sense of respect for those firefighters and everybody that died that day.” It was talking to Laura Cafaro however about how important it is this new generation honors the memory of the firefighters, that she noticed something very unexpected and incredible; a trio of students who had just wandered into the Campus Center for their workouts decided to take it upon themselves to join in on the event, climbing the steps themselves adding weight to their backs with their workout bags!
WSU students Andrew Cipriano, Matt Walsh, and Henry Morris felt that if the members of SGA were going to replicate the many stair climbs, providing a moment of respect and motivation for all who saw them, there was no reason they shouldn’t make an attempt themselves to understand what it was like for our brave past heroes. To quote Cipriano, “we came to the gym this morning…saw the guys and the firefighters’ outfits and just decided to tackle it ourselves, if they can do it then we can do it, right?” In spite of the fact that much like the SGA being tasked with this climb and having no personal memory of what happened, neither did any of these 3. That didn’t matter to them though, to quote Cipriano again “you always got to pay tribute to those who gave their lives to save all those people on that day. No one’s ever gonna forget that, for as long as this country lives on.”
