Suffolk Remembers

Published 7:45 pm Friday, October 7, 2022

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First responders lead 9/11 Never Forget Mobile Exhibit downtown to the Suffolk Peanut Festival site

The 9/11 Never Forget Mobile Exhibit made its way through downtown Friday morning on its way to the 44th Annual Suffolk Peanut Fest at the city’s Executive Airport.

First responders from Suffolk and surrounding localities led the procession down North Main Street, continuing down Carolina Road as it made its way to the festival site, where it will be on display for people to visit throughout Peanut Fest, which continues through Sunday. People will also get to see a steel beam from the 92nd floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center from 9/11.

The 1,100-square-foot mobile exhibit inside the 83-foot tractor trailer is making one of its first visits to Virginia, and its first to the Hampton Roads and Western Tidewater region. It features World Trade Center steel, aluminum façade from the buildings, radio transmissions from first responders and items found around the site after the World Trade Center’s twin towers collapsed.

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The exhibit was created to honor and preserve the legacies of first responders who lost their lives Sept. 11, 2001.

Tours are given by New York City firefighters who were at Ground Zero on 9/11.

Festival chairman Richard Bradshaw said this year’s theme of Broad Stripes, Bright Stars and Patriotic Guitars: A Tribute to Our Hometown Heroes and the Red, White and Blue made it fitting to showcase the mobile exhibit from the Stephen Siller Tunnel to Towers Foundation in New York.

The Virginia Tattoo bagpipe and drum corps greeted the mobile exhibit and first responders at the festival site. Ladder trucks also hung the U.S. flag that will be on display throughout the festival.

Video can be viewed here