Earlier this year we visited St Paul’s Church, the unofficial centre for the emergency services workers on the Twin Towers site after 9/11. It was extraordinary to see how people had come together to support the workers, and the way this support was represented by material offerings: soft toys, banners, blankets. Most moving for me was the collection of identity badges donated by the different rescue workers. These spanned the globe, including some from Hampshire that might have been donated by my neighbours the firemen. St Pauls seems to welcome its new role as a memorial site, although this cannot always be easy for its priests and parishioners. 
The transformation of the church shows how important the process of public memorialisation is at times of public trauma.
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Hi my name is Lenny V. I work for PepsiCo and I volunteered to go down to Ground Zero. I delivered 100 cases of soda and water that was donated from Pepsi to St. Pauls church a few days after 9/11/2001 . I met Father Peter and a gentleman named Hectorin which after delivering the product took me to Tower 1 and to the Iron Cross where I totally was in shock but yet felt it was something I wanted to do to help and to pay my respects to all the people that lost their lives and to all the firemen, policemen, and all the medical staffs that risked their lives to help others. I still have the Mayors badge that I wore to move around freely to assist anyone that needed a helping hand. This badge hangs over my dresser and will remain with me forever. God bless America
Thank you for adding your story, Lenny. The St Paul’s church memorial is truly humbling not so much for what it shows but for what it allows us to glimpse – the dedicated work of so many volunteers like yourself. So long as we can live in peace together the terrorists will have failed – Clare Rose