Editor's note: This piece of World Trade Center steel is temporarily on loan to the City of Louisville for Mayor Greenberg's 9/11 tribute on Friday, Sept. 11 at 9:30 a.m. at Metro Hall. It will return to Bill Howard Memorial Park after.

In September 2009, eight years after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Louisville’s Mercer Transportation drivers heeded the call to haul pieces of the World Trade Center from research storage at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Maryland back to New York City to be used in memorials around the world.

The volunteer operation consisted of 25 flatbed trucks moving steel beams along a police-escorted route closed to traffic, including the top level of the George Washington Bridge, to Hangar 17 at JFK Airport. Researchers of the institute that had examined and tested the beams lined the drive, waving and crying as they left — and a first-grade class was brought out to witness the event.

Following Mercer’s contribution to the transport effort, a 116-pound steel beam recovered from Ground Zero was awarded to Mercer from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in February 2011 as part of the Port Authority program.

The twisted, rusted beam is on display at Mercer’s Bill Howard Memorial Park on the corner of 12th and Main streets in the Portland neighborhood — across from the “Patriotic Mural” painted by Wilfred Sieg III on the W.R. Martin Company — and serves as Louisville’s only 9/11 memorial.