Flight 93 Memorial, Union City, Calif.

    Fueled by the vision of a single person wanting to honor the victims – many of whom were heading home to the San Francisco area – the idea moved toward reality thanks to a city government willing to go the extra mile.
    Completing the job has been a host of donations of products and services by a wide range of individuals and organizations, including the designer, stone suppliers and finishers, and the installation expertise of a range of local trade unions.
    In a world where projects of this nature sometimes become a matter of money, the bringing together of these people and their effort has been, in the words of landscape architect and designer Robert Mowat, “quite extraordinary.”
   
ONE VISION
    All this effort really starts with one man who felt it necessary to provide a formal remembrance of the heroism of the people on United Airlines’ Flight 93.
    Hayward Hills, Calif., resident Michael L. Emerson describes himself as a 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps and Desert Storm. Along with the rest of the country, he was devastated that September day.
    Following the events of 9/11, he began contacting family members of the 40 victims, to offer his condolences.
    “I had contacted them and built some friendships with some of the family members,” he explains. “Then, about a year went by and while there was a lot of talk about memorials at the Pentagon and in New York, there was nothing at that point in Pennsylvania for the people on Flight 93.
    “I said, ‘I want to do something in the Bay Area, because a lot of the people on that plane lived, worked or grew up here.’”
    Emerson began talking about the idea with family members he knew, and he says the response was enthusiastic.
    “They said they’d back me 100 percent if I could get it done,” he says.
    His first step was contacting officials in Hayward, Calif., but they weren’t interested. However, officials in neighboring Union City, Calif., were more-agreeable, and the project began to gather steam.
   
WHAT IS A MEMORIAL?
    There were no Union City residents on Flight 93, and deputy city manager Tony Acosta says this project might be a little out-of-the-ordinary for a municipal government. Still, city staff and the city council went out of their way to help the memorial along.
    “Most cities, including ours, would not automatically accept an offer of a park, memorial or development project from a private citizen unless the citizen could demonstrate the actual capability to bring it off,” says Acosta. “There also has to be a plan or proposal that meets the jurisdiction’s needs and standards.”
    Emerson had little of that when he approached the city with a sketch on a piece of paper. However, city officials took the step of referring him to Robert Mowat, principal of the San Francisco-based landscape-architectural firm Robert Mowat Associates.
    “We told him there was a landscape architect who’d done a lot of work for the city who might be interested in working with him,” says Acosta. “He’s done literally scores of parks and public facilities throughout northern California. And, a few months later, Emerson came back with a real design because Robert Mowat had agreed to design it.”
    It was Emerson’s choice to use the Sugar Mill Landing Park for the memorial, and Acosta says he chose a park that was underutilized.
    “It’s also easy to get to and has the kind of topography that would work for Mowat’s design of a linear memorial,” says Acosta. “We vetted the project and everyone who saw it though it would be an attractive and significant memorial-park feature.”
    Mowat praises the city for agreeing to the use of this particular parcel for the memorial. He estimates that had the property been developed commercially – and it’s located near Union City’s largest shopping mall – its value would be close to $1.5 million.
    “What I think gets lost in this process is how much the city has come forward,” says the designer. “This is a significant one. I think it was generous of them to do this.”
    For his part, Mowat explains the design was created following several charrettes (collaborative sessions) with his staff.
    “It entailed looking at the meaning of what a memorial is, how to elicit an emotional response, and what is an appropriate expression of this event,” Mowat says. “We also asked ourselves what was going to be appropriate for a citywide park located in a residential and commercial neighborhood.”
    Ultimately, the designer says the decision was made to seek a design that would help everyone – from family members of the victims to the general public – to reflect and heal from the impacts of 9/11.
    From several different concepts, Emerson identified elements he felt best expressed the memorial’s goals. The designer than incorporated them into a final design which the project’s originator approved.
    “We came up with the concepts of hope and remembrance,” says Mowat. “One was to obviously remember the events that happened on Flight 93, and the other is to think ahead further for hope for the future.”
    To do that, the design creates two separate plazas, one for each emotion, at the two ends of the parcel. They are then tied together with a winding walkway that takes visitors past 40 individual monument stones for the passengers and crew members.
    The Plaza of Remembrance features two granite storyboards recounting the story of Flight 93, a donor board, and an American sweet gum tree reflecting strength. The Plaza of Hope, at the other end of the memorial, incorporates an American flag and – surrounding it – tiles created by local school children representing their visions of the future.
    In between are the stones, which Mowat says really drove the main idea of the design.
    “During the design process, I was always reminded that it could have been any of us on the flight that day,” he says. “As we brainstormed, we couldn’t escape the fact that these were everyday Americans who were involved.”
    To reflect that, each of the victims is identified simply by name, age and hometown. On the face of each stone is also a polished stainless steel mirror.
    “We chose to do individual stones so that each is personalized and humanized,” explains Mowat. “The age, for instance, is what we talk to people about; we have an age. And, the mirrors reflect our own image to reflect it could have been any of us that day.”
    “We decided to leave the sides and the back of the stones unfinished to reflect that each person had an unfinished life,” adds Emerson.
    Initially, plans had been to have a recessed niche in the rear of each stone where people could leave mementos, but that became too much of a fabrication challenge.
   
FLURRY OF FAXES
    With a design and site in-hand, Emerson was then faced with the task of getting the memorial built and raising funds for its on-going maintenance – a requirement from the city.
    “This memorial is 99.5-percent donated, which I think is tremendous,” says Emerson. “I told anybody who wanted to get paid that we weren’t interested. If they wanted a tax deduction, I told them they could send us a check, because we’re a 501(c)3 charity.”
    While Emerson took some fairly conventional approaches to raising cash, such as selling wristbands and magnetic bumper ribbons, launching a Website and getting the Oakland A’s baseball team to hold a Flight 93 Memorial game, his method for lining up materials was a little less-traditional.
    “The way I found the stone suppliers was I looked up a bunch of companies on the Internet,” he explains. “Then, over a weekend, I started sending faxes. I sent about 200 faxes out to stone suppliers all over the country.”
    One of the first to respond was M.O. Bohrer, sales and marketing manager for Brownsville, Wis.-based Michels Corp., which quarries Wisconsin red granite through its Anderson Bros. & Johnson division.
    Emerson describes him as, “very enthusiastic.”
    Bohrer says he immediately responded because when he thinks of 9/11, the first thing he thinks about is Flight 93. And, he adds that while his employer is happy to help out with donations to causes locally and throughout Wisconsin, “this is the first big, out-of-state memorial on which we’ve helped.”
    Bohrer had his own impact on the project. For one thing, he says at that point the design called for the use of three different granites.
    “I said that we’d donate all the granite for the monuments if they’d make them all red,” he says.
    Because Emerson and Mowat were also interested in the Robin Blue granite quarried in Elberton, Ga., and because Michels Corp. could only quarry – but not finish – the 8’ tall slabs it was providing – Bohrer also provided Emerson with contact information on some of the Elberton granite producers. Again, the fax machine went to work.
    “I needed someone who could donate the polishing and engraving,” says Emerson. “I sent another bunch of faxes and I was able to get in touch with Boyd Granite Company Inc.”
    Owner Jim Boyd says like many faxes he receives, this one was headed for file 13, until he took a second look.
    “I called Michael (Emerson) and offered to do the story boards,” says Boyd. “That was how I initially got involved. Then, I decided to get some other people involved, so I called Rusty Adams at Star Granite Co., and they did the sandblasting on the two story boards and the donor board.”
    As with the Wisconsin granite, these are good-sized pieces. Boyd says the story boards are 10’ X 2.8’, and weigh more than 3,200 lbs each.
    In talking to Emerson about transporting his granite to Wisconsin to consolidate the shipment, Boyd also learned that the red granite was going to head for the West Coast unmarked and with a sawn finish.
    “The brilliance of the Wausau red deserves a polished finish,” Boyd says. “I told Michael, ‘Let me check around to see if I can get this polished.’ I started called around and got Baston Monuments Inc., Central Granite Co., Dixie Granite Co., Keystone Monuments Inc., King’s Monument Co., Rome Granite Co. and Walker Granite Co. to work on this, and nobody turned me down.”
    An Elberton firm, Darica Trucking Company Inc., donated the transportation of the red slabs from Wisconsin and Boyd divided up the work among the Elberton volunteers.
    “This took probably a year with the logistics of coordinating it all,” says Boyd. “Darica Trucking would go through Wausau from time to time and would bring the red slabs from there.”
   
MANY LABORERS
    With the stones and their marking assured, Emerson went out seeking donors to fill other needs, from concrete to a flagpole to the gum tree. Despite his success in locating a host of other people interested in participating in the memorial, he was unable to find a general contractor willing to do the work at no cost.
    That’s when the city of Union City stepped up to bat again.
    “We started casting around for folks who might be able to help,” says the city’s Acosta. “One of our city council members has ties to the Alameda County Central Labor Council and the Building Trades Council. He brokered a meeting between Emerson and the Building Trades Council, and they were really exciting about participating.”
    Barry Lubaviski, the Oakland, Calif.-based secretary-treasurer of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County, AFL-CIO, agrees that all the unions were pleased to be asked.
    “They’re very excited about this project and willing to lend their support,” Lubaviski says. “Not only has there been a significant amount of work, but union contractors have had a tremendous response in donating equipment and donating material.”
    That’s included everything – from grading and trenching to pouring and finishing the concrete base of the project, and installing the electrical fixtures that will illuminate each stone.
    While much of the project is being installed by workers experienced in their crafts – including members of the Oakland, Calif.-based Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen, Local 3 – working in their off-hours, some of the installation will be used for training.
    “When all the stone is in place, there’s concrete that will be poured and finished, and that will be done by the apprentice class of masons,” says Lubaviski. “Some 35 apprentices and instructors, and some of the journey-level workers in that trade, will come out and work on it because it’s more labor-intensive.”
    When exactly that will take place is still up in the air. Although the actual installation work began in March, when the individual red granite stones were uncrated, it was discovered that six of them had been incorrectly marked. The decision was made to truck them back to Elberton to be reworked, and they were due to be unloaded in Georgia the last week in April.
    “We’ll grind the faces off,” says Boyd. “In the granite-monument industry, we normally have some oversize, and so we’ll grind it off and hopefully there will be enough oversize that it won’t be noticeable. Once we get our hands on them, it will take about three-to-five working days to turn them around.”
    However, that and some unrelated concerns with the electrical system have encouraged Emerson to postpone the memorial’s dedication from the Memorial Day weekend to a by-invitation-only event sometime in July.
    The city’s Acosta says he was a bit concerned about meeting the earlier date even before the problem with the red stones.
    “It may be like a new house, where it’s done but the lawn guys show up next week,” Acosta says. “That’s not a big deal. The big deal is the memorial itself. What’s important are the stones and the walkway and the flagpole.”
    Other participants agree.
    “It’s going to be beautiful once it’s finished,” says Michels Corp.’s Bohrer. “What’s impressive is that it’s 100-percent donated. I think it’s tremendous and speaks to a lot of people.”
    Emerson says that after taking four years of his life, it’s become a pretty big thing.
    And, as Mowat puts it, “The type of response that happened on Flight 93 that day might be distinctly American. I’ve seen among the suppliers and the installers and the labor people who put it together that same can-do, go-to-it, let’s-work-together spirit.”
   
    Project Originator: Michael L. Emerson, Hayward Hills, Calif.
    Project Designer/Manager: Robert Mowat Associates, San Francisco
    Project Facilitator: City of Union City, Calif.
    Stone Suppliers: Michels Corp., Brownsville, Wis.; Boyd Granite Company Inc., Elberton, Ga.
    Stone Fabricators: Baston Monuments Inc., Central Granite Co., Dixie Granite Co., Keystone Monuments, Inc., King’s Monument Co., Rome Granite Co., Star Granite Co., Walker Granite Co., all of Elberton, Ga.
    General Contractor: Building and Construction Trades Council of Alameda County, AFL-CIO, Oakland, Calif.
    Stone Installer: Bricklayers and Allied Craftsmen, Local 3, Oakland, Calif.   

This article first appeared in the May 2007 print edition of Stone Business. ©2007 Western Business Media Inc.